


Meanwhile, In Another Universe

by aralias



Series: The Sleepwalker [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Professors, Christmas, M/M, One of My Favorites
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:57:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 52,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The AU spin-off/prequel to 'The Sleepwalker'. (Unfinished)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. O! He Doth Teach The Torches To Burn Bright (literally, as well as figuratively)

**Author's Note:**

> I've only written chapters 1 to 4 of a planned... many. In the notes at the end of chapter 4 you can find out what was going to happen after the stuff that exists. 
> 
> I would strongly suggest you read 'The Sleepwalker' before you read this fic, otherwise you won't know who anyone is!

  
**Chapter One: O! He Doth Teach The Torches To Burn Bright (literally, as well as figuratively)**   


_December 1995_

If there was a social event Professor Samuel Angelo Jones enjoyed less than the faculty Christmas party he’d mercifully forgotten what it was. Every year the same-ish people, the same lack of food, and the same vast array of cheap alcohol: a combination any idiot could have seen was likely to lead to excessive vomiting and truth-telling later in the evening.

With another crowd, the second might have been vaguely amusing, but this was Sam’s fifth faculty Christmas party. He knew the sort of secrets his colleagues were keeping to themselves, and while they were often embarrassing, they weren’t all that funny.

He usually managed to slip away after a couple of hours, having talked to the people in his department and the few others on the staff he found bearable. He’d already stayed at this party well over two hours, but his classic “leave before it gets really bad” plan had been put to one side after an event early into the evening.

Early into every faculty party there was a short interlude in which the Chancellor gave a short speech, and pointed out any new professors. Those new professors were expected to wave or in some way indicate who they were — crucially without talking, because this slowed everything down. Fortunately or unfortunately, Sam wasn’t sure, yet, which it was, nobody had told this to Professor John Smith, formerly of London, England. Either that or he hadn’t listened. There had been several attempts to cut off his long, enthusiastic speech about how happy he was to be here, and how much he loved Christmas and parties in general, and Smith had managed to ignore all of them without seeming rude or deaf or even raising his voice. Eventually, however, even he ran out of material and with a short bow, he handed the microphone back to the Chancellor as though the man hadn’t been trying to grab it from him for the last ten minutes. The Chancellor introduced the other less interesting new recruits, before telling everyone to enjoy themselves (within reason), Sam joined in the polite clapping that followed and looked around for the John Smith — but by this time Smith had vanished into the crowd: a pretty impressive feat, given that he had been wearing a top hat in a place where most other people weren’t.

It was this that had upset Sam’s departure plans. Against his better judgement, he had decided sometime around _‘the smell of Christmas trees always takes me back to Geismar — obviously that wasn’t a fir tree, but I find the association works that way, don’t you? Sense memory is a very strange thing. For example, the smell of badger fur reminds me of my mother’s living room in December, and she wouldn’t have allowed one in the house’_ that although Smith was probably mad, he was definitely compelling. Very compelling actually. Really fucking compelling. Something about the voice and the attitude and the way he moved his hands and maybe the pretty face and the well-cut trousers had convinced Sam that finding John Smith and listening to him talk complete crap would be a better plan for the evening that going home and rearranging his bookshelves.

The new plan was kind of stupid, and Smith’s disappearing act was clearly Fate’s way of pointing this out. Another man might have taken the hint, but Sam was sure that anyone who liked Christmas parties as much as John Smith had claimed to wouldn’t have fucked off home that early. He’d probably just gone out for a cigarette or something. Until he returned, Sam did research — or, at least, he tried to.

It was very difficult to get any useful information out of any of the members of the science department, because they a) were suspicious of his motives, given that he usually went of his way not to speak to them and b) seemed to know very little about John Smith anyway. He was British, he was about forty, he had written a number of very successful and influential papers that had seemed relatively sane before they’d met him, he was unnecessarily friendly, he didn’t usually wear a top hat, he kept bringing students back to the departmental office, he wasn’t very good at tidying up after himself, he’d been responsible for all four of the unscheduled fire alarms in the last week, and was apparently putting on some sort of firework display later in the evening.

“Ah, so that’s where he’s gone,” Sam supplied. The professor who’d imparted the information looked so bemused that Sam added, “I guess there are things to sort out.”

“Presumably.” The professor scowled. “Let’s hope someone else has sorted out a rapid response unit. Professor Smith sets things on fire even when he doesn’t mean to. Who knows what carnage he’s going to unleash tonight?”

Sam laughed, but it clearly wasn’t a joke as the man looked at him as if he were as mad as Smith and strode away to find someone more normal. With a repressed sigh, Sam glanced over the crowd, and located Mary Shelley (a name that might have been difficult for another professor of English Literature to carry off, but which Mary carried off by threatening to punch anyone who tried to make more than one Frankenstein joke) trying to catch the attention of the man behind the makeshift bar.

“Bit late for you, isn’t it?” she observed, as he joined her. “I assumed you had some sort of biological imperative to leave before things got good. _Oi,”_ she called to the bar man, who was talking to someone younger and more conventionally attractive, “is there ever going to be any service down here, or should I just help myself?”

Sam leaned against the table next to her. “You don’t know anything about this new Professor Smith, do you?” he asked, as the bar man (presumably prompted by Mary’s threatening grabs for the wine bottles behind him) hurried towards them.

“Not all British people know each other,” Mary told him. “There are, in actual fact, many thousands I haven’t even met, let alone know. _Finally,”_ she told the barman. “Two glasses of red. And be quick about it,” she called after him. Turning back to Sam she asked, “You’re not drinking, are you?”

“Not here, no. And England may be large, Contrary Mary, but the academic community is pretty small. Add to that the fact that he’s been working here for about three months, apparently, and you’re a lot more sociable than me,” Mary gave him a wry look, “in a good way,” Sam told her, “and it’s not completely inconceivable that you know something. Besides,” he admitted, “I’ve already asked everyone else more likely.”

 _“Aaaah,”_ Mary scooped up her two glasses of wine with a hard look at the man who’d put them there, “I see. You _like_ him.”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know him,” Sam said, by which he meant: _‘yes, a lot, help me please’._ “And in that I am apparently not alone. The guy’s been here three months, as I said, and nobody here knows him. What the hell am I supposed to do with ‘he’s about forty, isn’t obviously married, and doesn’t tidy up after himself’?”

“Forty two, but says he’s thirty five,” Mary said. “I know him. You’ve come to the right place, young Jones.”

“England not all that big after all, huh?”

“Apparently not,” Mary said, as they walked away from the bar. “I’ve known John forever. In fact, we used to go out, briefly. Very, very briefly. God, I really hope none of my other exes are planning on following me to America. Clean sheet, my arse.”

“You should try being less compelling,” Sam told her.

“Tell me about it.”

“So, what’s this one like? A little bit gay, right? He has to be-”

“What, because of the waistcoat?”

“Because otherwise I will be sad,” Sam told her. “Possibly forever. So, let’s try again — gay-ish? What do you think?”

Mary considered the question while Sam tried not to hurry her. “I don’t know. I think so,” she said eventually. “Mainly women, with John, but he doesn’t like to categorise himself, which should tell you something about him right there. Otherwise... Lovely,” she said. “Excessively charming, and brilliant. Obviously he’s completely and utterly mad, the word eccentric was practically invented for him — I mean, it wasn’t, and you shouldn’t ever say that to him, or he’ll go into a long discussion of its etymological roots before you can say ‘John, I _know-’_ ”

“Got it.”

“And he doesn’t ever tidy up after himself, and forgets appointments, actually sometimes he forgets he’s talking to you in the middle of conversations, and he can be very rude, but,” her voice got louder, “he’s very nice really. And very clever. And I said charming already, and-”

“Standing behind me,” Sam finished. Mary nodded.

“I had to loop round when I saw you leaving the bar,” John Smith said as Sam turned to look at him, “but it feels like it was worth it.” He smiled and held out his hand. The top hat had been misplaced somewhere, or he probably would have raised it. “John Smith.”

“Sam Jones,” Sam told him, trying not to smile too widely or scarily as they shook hands.

“I know. I also know you’ve been asking after me, Sam Jones.” Sam’s smile stayed in place as his mind said _‘Shit, next time more subtle’_ to itself. “I thought it would be easier for everyone if I just came over, although you have managed to locate the only person in the room I actually know, so perhaps it’s unnecessary-”

“I was just going,” Mary said. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Nice to see you, John.”

“You too. I’ll find you later,” John promised.

As she walked away past him, she mouthed, _“he likes flattery”_ towards Sam. She changed this into a jaunty grin as John turned to look at her. _“No, really,”_ she added as he turned back.

“So, what sort of information were you looking for?” John asked, as Sam tried to give Mary a _‘go to hell’_ look over his head without him noticing. “Just sort of general biographical information? Likes, dislikes, parents, siblings-”

“Sure.” Sam looked down so he wouldn’t have to keep looking at Mary who was making obscene gestures and saw that underneath the cuffs of John’s well-pressed grey trousers were shiny black shoes and bright white spats. “Any of that. Are your parents alive?”

John nodded briskly. “Both alive, and living in my childhood home in one of the nicer London suburbs. They have a dog at the moment, I think, and my brother visits them occasionally, which must be trying for them, but they haven’t actually moved house-”

“Whereas you moved continent,” Sam supplied.

John grinned. “Not to get away from him. I like to travel. In the last five years I’ve lived in four different countries-”

“Where-” Sam began.

“Questions at the end,” John told him, without breaking his stride, “not including America. I was back in Cambridge briefly when they offered me this position. I think they’re regretting it now, but it’s too late. I’m enjoying myself.

“I have a flat in a terrible part of San Francisco, right above a laundrette, which I think is being used as part of a drug smuggling ring. It’s certainly full of questionable characters with fascinating stories and a flair for sleight of hand. It’s also very near the opera house, which is good, because I like opera. I adore Puccini — the music, that is, not the man, who smoked far too much to be good company. I like computers and anything new and exciting. At the moment I have about five mobile phones, and a pager, which is actually broken at the moment, but something always is. And, of course, I like old things, though not museums. Much too sterile. I like to touch things. I’ve already said I love to travel, haven’t I? I speak three languages fluently, not including Latin, and I can get by in Spanish and Mandarin.”

“Impressive.”

“Thank you. I like playing cricket, and watching rugby. I like- have we done enough likes now?”

“Is there going to be a test at the end?”

“Absolutely not. I don’t do tests. My memory is excellent, except when it comes to formalised education. I also — is it OK to move onto dislikes? — despise pears, the fruit, not things that come in twos, politics, which is a shame because it’s the family business, men with facial hair, women with impractical shoes, narrow-minded pedants, people who exercise for the sake of it, all your American sports, sorry-”

“That’s OK.”

“-synthetic fabrics, people who talk or fiddle with things while they should be watching or listening to something, also chewing gum. Except when I’ve run out of Blue Tac, but that should be its only use, and it should _never_ appear in my classroom.

“I find myself currently single. In the past I’ve gone out with both men and women with varying levels of success. However, and this is really what I came over to tell you, I’m sorry, I seem to have been sidetracked slightly, I’m not even slightly interested in going out with you. Questions?”

Sam grinned. “Which were the four countries you lived in?”

John’s mouth twitched. “India, China, Greenland and England, and America makes five.”

“Fascinating,” Sam told him. “What was Greenland like?”

“Beautiful. Astonishingly beautiful. I was there for five months, and it was just as astounding at the end of that as it was on the first day. Go if you get the chance.”

“OK, I will. Thanks.”

“That’s it, is it?”

“No. What’re you doing Friday night? I have a box at the War Memorial-”

“No, you don’t,” John told him. “Nice try, but I would have seen you if you did.”

“Ok, so I don’t,” Sam admitted, “but I could have one by Friday. My dad knows the director-”

“You see, this is one of the many reasons I’m not going to go out with you. I know you didn’t ask, but I did have a short speech-”

“Yeah, I bet you did,” Sam told him. “I admit, I’ve only known you for ten minutes, but you seem to have a short speech about pretty much everything.”

As he had expected, this made John frown adorably and silently — presumably in an attempt to prove this statement wrong.

“Go on then,” Sam prompted. “What was it? Apart from the beard, which I admit was a mistake, and I guess someone must have told you I was an alderman, and maybe even that I actually don’t own a cell phone, but I really don’t know what’s wrong with the opera on Friday. That’s got to be a step in the right direction.”

“It’s not the opera,” John explained, “although I can’t actually do Friday and have therefore booked tickets for Thursday’s performance. You probably don’t know this, but it’s a Verdi, and my love for Verdi is only slightly less than my love for Puccini. The problem is the casual arrogance of wealth. I hate money, and the moneyed especially - that should have been on the list. It’s not your fault, but by now you expect to get your way-”

“So do you,” Sam pointed out. “My father’s loaded, what’s your excuse?”

“Well, I’m brilliant,” John said, as if it was obvious. “It doesn’t make sense not to do things my way.”

Sam laughed. “OK. And you hate money. So what do you think is going to keep you in non-synthetic fabrics? No, wait, don’t bother with that one. What’s the rest of your list? Politics, the beard, the money, the casual arrogance-”

“It’s- well, I have no real interest in your subject,” John told him. “It’s not that I don’t like fiction, but I don’t have the time to devote to it properly. The last time I read an entire novel was on the plane over here, and it was terrible-”

“What was it?”

“It’s not important. The Horse Whisperer — it was a gift from my mother. As I said, it’s not the subject at fault, in general, it’s me, but you’re well regarded in your field, so I assume you care about it, and it would frankly be embarrassing for me if you ever wanted to talk about it.”

“You realise that’s a shit reason,” Sam told him. “And it must be a load of crap, because you went out with Mary-”

“Briefly,” John said. “Very briefly. I thought she told you that. Besides, I think I was a mistake. She likes more muscular men, as a rule. Which is another problem with you-”

“Because you hate muscular men, I see.”

“No,” John said, “I don’t, at all, but I do, as I said, dislike the sort of people who think going to the gym to improve their appearance is a good use of their time. Now maybe you’re going to tell me you got this,” he gestured downwards from Sam’s chest to his knees, getting distracted somewhere around the middle, “um, playing badminton, or something ridiculous, but I don’t think you’re much of a team player-”

“I fence,” Sam told him.

John’s eyes crinkled. “Interesting.”

“And I run,” Sam continued. “And I’m a member of three gyms around the city.”

“Boring.”

“That’s the point. It gives me time to think, plan my lectures. We can’t all be mega-geniuses who make everything up on the spot, you know. Some of us are just mega-geniuses who have thoughts and then write them down.”

“I’m sure I must have written some of them down,” John said with a slow grin.

“Sure. OK. So, is that everything?”

“Very nearly, except I hear you hate the Christmas party, which clearly marks you as a cold-hearted scoundrel.”

Sam spread his hands. “Can’t argue with that. I’d have been out of here hours ago, except that I heard there’s going to be some sort of spectacular fireworks display later.”

To his surprise, John frowned. “Spectacular, yes,” he said, checking his watch, “but not later.” He began digging around in the inner pockets of his jacket. “It was supposed to start ten minutes ago, but this,” he produced a phone, “was supposed to remind me, and it hasn’t. Now why is that?” He twisted the face of his watch a couple of times, and suddenly every mobile phone in the vicinity started chirping. Another twist of the watch face, and they stopped. John laughed as people stared at their phones in confusion or turned to look at him. “It’s all right. It was just on silent. Excuse me.”

He walked away, and then returned. “Oh, and I meant to say, earlier a rather old gentleman told me not to go near you if I didn’t want to be buggered in a cupboard before the evening was up. Well, he actually said fucked up the arse in the nearest closet, but I like to think he would have said ‘buggered in a cupboard’, if he’d thought about it and hadn’t been American. And I assume we’ve gone over this enough already, and that it was more an unpleasant way of saying you were gay than an actual threat, but in case there is still a risk, I’d like to use this opportunity to head it off. I’m rather claustrophobic and I do actually have other things to do with my evening. All right?” He smiled brightly, “Enjoy the fireworks,” and wandered off into the crowd, tapping his watch face.

“What a dick,” Sam said to no one in particular.

“Yes,” Mary said from his left. “That’s another word that might have been designed for him.” She looked up at Sam who was still staring in the direction John had left in, and grinned wryly. “But, let me guess, you like him more than ever.”

“You have no idea,” Sam told her. “My brain keeps giving me more and more hyperbolic statements to live up to. Like, right now I’m thinking ‘if we don’t get married and have lots of sex and three beautiful smart kids through a miracle of medical science he probably discovered after he’s won the Nobel and mentioned me winning the Lit Nobel as his chief inspiration, then I will have to kill myself.’”

Mary whistled; Sam shook his head. “Yer.”

“Nice knowing you.”

“Thanks.”

“You do know John is a physicist, rather than a biologist, don’t you.”

“This is my fantasy,” Sam pointed out, “so he can be whatever he wants to be.”

As he said this there was an enormous explosion from outside, which was followed by another smaller one, and then another.

“Sounds like your boyfriend’s fireworks have started,” Mary observed unnecessarily.

“Don’t mock me, Shelley.”

“Look, you managed to hold his attention for twenty minutes. That’s almost as long as our entire romantic relationship.” She jabbed him in the ribs with a long finger. “He’s interested.”

“I figured. Even English weirdoes don’t walk up to complete strangers and talk about themselves for that long them without a motive.”

“So cheer up. Here, let me get you a drink-”

The bar was relatively quiet as most of the faculty were clustered around the windows. Leaving Mary to fend for herself, Sam found a space at the end of the room near several members of the History department and stared out over the quad, which was filled with thick plumes of coloured fire that fell back to the ground in the shape of butterflies. Another five rockets sped into the sky, and Sam realised that beyond the sound of the Christmas music being pumped into the hall was the sound of their ascent, forming a high, perfect major chord. As it ended in a thunder-clap and a shower of sparks, another set of rockets launched in a more minor key, and as they finished a third set resolved the progression. A scattering of tiny rockets beat a quick, staccato tune against the sky.

Underneath this display, various dark figures ran across the grass, frantically lighting each collection. Without really meaning to, Sam looked for the ground-level flash of white that would indicate John’s spats, but it was difficult not to watch the sky where a flock of birds had just burst brightly into being.

“Good, isn’t it?” John’s voice said from behind him.

Sam glanced back at him and then turned back to the windows. “I heard you didn’t approve of people speaking during performances.”

“Other people,” John clarified. “Yes, that includes all of you looking at me now. That’s it, turn around and watch the fireworks. They may be ruined, but they’re still probably the best fireworks you’ll ever see. I couldn’t get the DJ to turn the music off,” he explained, “and I didn’t have time to sabotage his equipment. On the plus side, I do like this song.” It was the Jackson 5’s ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’.

Sam grinned at his reflection in the windowpane. “They’re still utterly incredible,” he told it. “It’s like watching Gandalf’s fireworks-”

“You know, I’ve always wanted someone to say that to me,” John said, leaning closer. He smelled subtly of expensive cologne. “If you like that, you’ll like the next one. I actually based it on one of his.”

“So, you’ve read Lord of the Rings,” Sam said, as the sky blossomed with deep crimson clouds that crackled briefly with lightning before breaking into yellow droplets of light.

“I have read Lord of the Rings,” John agreed. “Your second novel was quite similar, wasn’t it? Obviously I haven’t read it,” he explained at Sam’s incredulous look, “but I remember old J. R. R. mentioning something of the sort.”

“Tolkien said my book was derivative?”

“No, no, not derivative, but there was, what was it, a similar blend of multicultural mythologies surrounding a quest narrative.”

“OK. That’s fine, though actually I was largely using Scandinavian myths from various eras, but still — nice of Tolkien to review a book published twenty years after his death, even if he did get the details wrong.”

“Ah,” John said. “Yes. Now I come to think of it, it was probably someone else who said that exact thing. Whoever it was, though, I distinctly remember that they enjoyed the book.”

“Maybe you should read it then,” Sam suggested.

“Maybe I will. I might even do it soon. There’s a lot of water between San Francisco and London and rather than have my mother disown me again, I’ve volunteered to fly across it twice in the next month.”

“You know, that’s funny,” Sam told him, “but I’m actually going to be in London for Christmas.”

“Undoubtedly to check out the London operatic scene,” John said. “Actually, it is excellent, and you could do worse-” He was interrupted by a loud beeping from inside his jacket, which was itself interrupted by another deep bass boom from outside.

“Sorry,” John said with a brilliant smile, fishing the phone out of his inside pocket, and turning it off again. “That’s my other appointment for the evening. I should go.”

Sam followed him away from the windows as though John had him on a leash (not a bad idea for later, his brain thought to itself before he could tell it to shut the fuck up). “What, and miss the rest of the party? And your fireworks?”

“All the best ones have already gone off,” John said. Several people turned around at that, and he beamed and added, “Yes, that’s right, only the very best ones left now.” He let Sam see his _‘whoops’_ grimace as they walked away.

“OK, so the party-”

“I know. Tragic, isn’t it? But there are some things I need to finish off in the lab before I leave for England on Friday, and there’s the Verdi tomorrow, which really only leaves tonight.”

“Wait, so you’re leaving the Christmas party to do work, like a cold-hearted scoundrel-”

“My own projects. And I wouldn’t leave the party early, if I could help it, but one of the janitors told me yesterday that they turn off all the power over the holidays. And of course I could rig up some sort of battery-powered generator to see the thermo-stationary temporal imager through this difficult period, but then I’d have to transfer it over and there’s still the possibility the generator might fail and it’s been quite temperamental since- sorry are you at all interested in this?”

“Deeply,” Sam told him, which wasn’t entirely untrue. He was certainly deeply interested in the sound of John’s voice and the way his mouth moved, even if he was not (exactly) interested in this particular subject.

This was fortunate, because John’s explanation of the device was full of quite simple words Sam recognised as being from the English language, but arranged in a way that he suspected was deliberately confusing. A sort of code John had with himself, which let him talk about his ideas without anyone being able to replicate or even understand them, even if they knew roughly what he was on about.

The explanation was made still more incomprehensible, because John had clearly seen that there was quite a short distance between where they were when he began speaking and the door out of the party, and he’d sped up the rate at which he talked in order to fit everything in.

“-which feeds into the left and red nozzle, and eventually all the light from figure three coalesces into a holographic display of a heat signature on the other side of the universe, a three dimension image you can, ah, manipulatementallywithconcentrationoratleastitwouldifitwasworking,buteverythingseemstobeshortingoutwhenitreachesthethirdgreenresister,” John said very quickly in the space of about a metre. “Any questions?” he asked at a more normal speed as he reached the external door.

“How did you convince anyone to hire you as an imparter of knowledge?”

“Any questions about the machine?” John clarified.

“No,” Sam said. “I didn’t even understand what you were on about. It was embarrassing. Don’t bother talking to me about science ever again. On the other hand,” he said as John nodded, as though this hadn’t been irony, and pushed the door open, “if the third green resister, or whatever, is being a pain, why don’t you just get rid of it?”

With the door still hanging open behind him, John raised an eyebrow that informed Sam he was dangerously insane. “The third green resister is the only thing keeping the imager from exploding.”

“Right,” Sam said. “OK, don’t do that. What about-”

“No, no, no, hold on,” John muttered, fishing around in his pockets again. “Yes, it would allow the power to flow through subsection 4b, wouldn’t it?” He raised what looked like a different cell phone to his ear. “And I could probably siphon the excess energy off into- Martin, hello! Yes, I’m on my way. I’ve just had the most incredible idea-”

The door thumped shut behind him. There was a pane of glass set into it so Sam could see exactly how many times John turned to look back (none) as he crossed the campus.

The fireworks had ended. Sam considered heading home, but it was too late to start on the bookcases, and it seemed a bit lame to just go home having been — not even rejected, more forgotten about. What he should do (what Mary would advise) was drink until he forgot all about John Smith and his ridiculous ideas about what constituted a conversation. What he did do (because the wine was hideous and there were classes to teach in the morning) was join the group dancing awkwardly in front of the DJ.

“Great fireworks, huh?” Simon, one of the hotter Math professors observed over the music.

“Totally amazing,” Sam agreed. “I told the man in charge they were like Gandalf’s, but on retrospect they were better.”

“...Yes,” Simon said.

“He doesn’t know who Gandalf is!” Mary bellowed drunkenly, clapping an arm around Sam’s shoulders. “Honestly,” she continued at exactly the same volume, “maths teachers, eh? Lucky you’ve got your looks, Si, and a wife. He’s got a wife,” she told Sam helpfully.

“Thanks Mary, I know,” Sam said, flashing an _‘oh dear, Mary’s drunk again’_ look in Simon’s direction as he steered Mary away. “I don’t want to know about everyone here, just John, so keep any other basic facts about our colleagues to yourself.”

“Sorry,” Mary said — clearly not sorry, or as drunk as she looked. She began an out-of-time solo rumba to ‘Step into Christmas’, which had started belting from the speaker system. “I was just checking it was random chance that had steered you in the direction of the most attractive man in the room, Samwise, me old mate.”

“Half an hour after professing eternal love for your friend? What do you take me for?”

“Oh John can look can look after himself,” Mary said, as Sam finally took the hint and took her hands. “I was just interested. Hey, watch it- these shoes aren’t as sturdy as they look.”

“Sorry. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so gay in my entire life,” Sam confided as he spun her around.

Mary snorted. “I doubt-”

A shrill alarm cut through the Elton John classic and whatever unflattering thing Mary was about to say.

Sam swore and tried unsuccessfully to push through the throng of people heading in the direction of the exit.

“He’s fine,” Mary shouted in his ear. “Don’t worry. John’s good at blowing things up. He was standing well back, and is probably just really pissed off right now. The best thing you and I can do is just go home. To our own houses obviously. Not a shared home that would be ridiculous-”

“Mary, are you angling for a ride, or are you just babbling?”

“Angling for a ride,” Mary admitted, “and babbling. But my babbling always contains a large dollop of truth. Look, I was going to take a taxi, but now everyone’s leaving and it’s going to be impossible. And I’m absolutely sure he’s fine-”

“Uh huh.”

“Seriously. What do you think you’re going to do? Tear through the wreckage of his lab completely unnecessarily- oh, hi John.”

The John Smith who approached was attractively dishevelled and frowning. He also had soot smudged artfully along his cheekbones. He grabbed Sam’s arm. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Your so called idea has backfired rather spectacularly-”

“Oh, so it’s my idea now it didn’t work?”

“Exactly. You’re catching on quickly. That’s good because we’re about to lose the science lab. Mary, you’re going to have to find another way home-”

“Thanks for nothing,” Mary called as John pulled open a door.

“You’re welcome,” he told her and steered Sam inside.

It was pitch black behind the door. When it closed the sound of the fire alarm was largely blocked out.

“You know this is a janitor’s closet,” Sam said, his brain catching up with his mouth in time for it not to come as a total surprise when John pulled him back into a kiss that made the metal bookcases full of cleaning products shudder.

“OK, so you do know,” Sam said, pulling on the light as John began undoing the buttons of his shirt for him. “Just to be clear, the science lab isn’t actually on fire, is it?”

John grinned and, leaving Sam’s shirt flapping, pulled off his own jacket. “Obviously not.”

Sam laughed incredulously. “Believe me, there’s no obviously about it with you-”

“Sam, I’m not the sort of man to have sex in a cupboard while his university burns. Trust me.”

 _‘Holy shit’,_ Sam’s brain said to itself, as his voice asked calmly, “So the soot is just-?”

“Real soot, old experiment.” John had managed to negotiate his waistcoat and unclip the braces underneath that, and looked up from unbuttoning his trousers. He smiled again widely. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist once I’d already set off the fire alarm. The fire alarm’s a little gift for you, by the way. I don’t know whether you noticed, but the party’s over. It’s my way of saying thank you for fixing my experiment. I really thought I was going to be here all night-”

“Hold on - you set the fire alarm off just so I could get out of the party? As a gift?”

“That’s right,” John said, his smile languorous and sexy; his trousers pooling round his ankles. “Do you like it? I suppose, on retrospect, I could have tapped you on the shoulder and suggested I was free for a cupboard sojourn, but it honestly never occurred to me. Has anyone ever told you that you have the most perfect abdominal muscles since Pythagoras?” He’d paused with the fingers of one hand caught by the elastic waistband of Sam’s underwear. “It’s really very distracting-”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re completely insane?”

“Constantly. I’m sure it would get depressing eventually, even for someone with my temperament, but most people follow it with ‘but it just might work’, so I’ve never taken it to heart.”

“They must also tell you you’re sickeningly overconfident-”

“I’m afraid so. You’re going to have to do better than that if you looking to be memorable.”

“You know that sounds like a challenge.”

“I’m sure it does,” John agreed, which was clearly the cue for Sam to press him back against the bookcases again and kiss him as soundly as possible while searching for the condoms in his inside jacket pocket. John obligingly unbuttoned his flies for him and then tried unsuccessfully to pull Sam’s jeans down without breaking the kiss. They both laughed as John stumbled slightly, and then Sam turned him roughly round to face the bookcases.

“Sorry, was that supposed to be impressive?” John asked, twisting his head to look back at Sam, but his voice was warm rather than mocking.

“And you never know when to keep quiet,” Sam said, sliding one hand down the back of John’s boxers, and pushing his own jeans down with the other. “I bet they tell you that too.”

“People also pay me to talk.” John squirmed as Sam’s lubricated index finger reached his anus. “You can see why I get confused.”

“Well, you do talk very well.”

“Thank- ah.” Sam pushed his finger in and John dropped his head forward and gripped the bookcases more tightly. “Next time, perhaps a warn-”

“Nuh uh,” Sam said, ripping through the condom wrapper with his teeth, “questions at the end.”

John laughed. “I’m really beginning to like you, Sam Jones.”

“You’re going to like me a lot more in a minute.”

“Really? Is that a-?”

“Second finger.”

“-promise?”

“OK, can you take a third yet?”

This time John groaned, the sound audible over the muffled siren. “Now,” he said eventually, “I miss the- element of surprise.”

Sam drew out his fingers. “There’s no pleasing you, is there?” John laughed softly, leaning for support against the bookcases. “Yeah, that sounded better in my head,” Sam admitted. He pulled John’s boxers carefully over his erection. “So do you want a warning this time, or not?”

“Surprise me. Though I think you should know I wasn’t joking about my claustrophobia. Any shrieks you hear could just as easily be panic as pleasure.”

“The closet was your idea,” Sam reminded him. He wrapped one arm around John’s narrow chest and gripped the bookcase with his other hand.

“My idea? My-? It was inevitable, Sam. Sam, Sam-” He breathed out as Sam pushed into him. “At least- that’s what I was told by an- apparently very reputable source. He seemed to think he was reputable anyway.”

“You can let me know if you want to stop,” Sam said, which seemed a bit of a ridiculous thing to say to this man, who was so contrary he was probably considering calling a halt to this right now. But John was silent apart from his breathing, which came raggedly, either with arousal or tension or fear. He almost certainly wasn’t really claustrophobic. They’d been in the cupboard for five minutes before he’d even mentioned it, but just in case Sam slowed his rhythm and asked, “OK there?”

“I thought I was not telling you to stop,” John said, and Sam grinned into his hair, drew back and pushed into him again hard. He slid his hand down the front of John’s immaculate shirt towards his cock. John gave a higher gasp of surprise as Sam fingers closed around him, which became a moan as Sam pumped his hand roughly in time with his hips. John’s body clenched more and more tightly, and then he came — quietly at first, but as Sam continued to fuck him he began what could only be described as a low whimper.

“Almost there,” Sam soothed as he slammed his hips forward. “I’m almost- baby, I’m so close. It’s-” He gripped John’s chest as he came, pressing his face into John’s shoulder.

He held the embrace even after the delicious shuddering had stopped, breathing in the smell of John’s cologne and-

 _“Baby?”_ John repeated incredulously. “Really?”

“You don’t like that, huh.”

“I like my name,” John told him.

“OK,” Sam said, pulling out. “Sorry,” but he wasn’t because John hadn’t said anything along the lines of _‘what right do you have to call me anything, when we hardly know each other?’_ He also didn’t say anything other than “Good, glad to hear it”, when Sam promised it wouldn’t happen again.

While John pulled his trousers up and shrugged off his waistcoat so he could re-hook his braces, Sam disposed of the condom in the janitor’s trash can. He re-dressed and washed his hands briefly in the tiny cold sink set into the wall. Inevitable or not, the closet was actually a pretty good location for brief sexual encounters. There was even a wide array of cleaning products, though before he could suggest any of them for cleaning John’s semen off the bookshelves, John had wiped it up with a large handkerchief.

He stuffed back into his pocket and grinned. “Shall we go then? My taxi should be waiting outside.”

Sam opened the door for him. “Is that a weird way of saying you want me to drive you-”

“No, no-”

“-because I can, if you want.”

“No, it’s fine. I rang a taxi company before I set the fire alarm off.”

They stepped outside the university building. At some point, though Sam hadn’t noticed, the fire alarm had been switched off. The driver of John’s taxi was leaning against the side of his car smoking.

“Should I be insulted?” Sam asked.

“I don’t think so,” John said. “Do you think you should be? I just didn’t want to be stranded here if you turned out to be the inconsiderate bastard everyone says you are. Apparently without reason. You’re actually very considerate-” Sam raised an eyebrow, and John grinned. “Right. I sense I should stop talking now. Have a nice Christmas.”

“Maybe I’ll see you before that,” Sam said. “In London,” he clarified.

“No. Don’t follow me to London,” John said. He opened the front passenger door despite the taxi-code that forbade this.

“You know that sounds like a dare,” Sam told him.

John laughed. “It isn’t,” he said, and got into the car.

Like an idiotic sap, Sam watched it drive away, so he saw John turn and wave at him briefly, before the driver said something to distract his attention.

Five children, Sam thought as he began walking in the direction of his own car. Two cats, a big house obviously, lots of sex in every room, at least two Nobels between them, maybe a planet named for John, no wait — a whole planet for John (he’d be able to visit it after inventing the teleport) and his likeness vividly and movingly represented in fiction by the love of his life. Basically they’d better get a move on. The next few years were going to be busy.


	2. London

**Chapter 2: London**

For all that he loved big impressive machines, travelling and talking to people he didn’t know for long periods of time, John Smith hated to fly. Everything was arrayed against him: the food, the plastic-y fabric over the chairs, the confined space, the queue for the toilet, the extremely limited baggage allowance, the lack of mobile phone signal, someone else’s choice of film flicking from five or six televisions within his eye line. The luxury ocean liners of the early 20th century were more his style. In fact, John had tried to explain this to his mother on numerous occasions. If there had been the option of getting on a beautiful, opulent boat with five trunks, two servants and a mobile phone, he would have been more enthusiastic about moving between place to place – provided, of course, that the journey took less than two days. As it was, he preferred to move somewhere, and then stay there for at least six months in order to make the flying part worthwhile. That was why he couldn’t possibly come back for Irving’s birthday, or cousin Suzie’s christening or whatever it was. Irving would understand and cousin Suzie didn’t understand who he was, or actually anything at all, because she was a baby, and wouldn’t miss him. Christmas was a bit different, because it was Christmas. John always went home for Christmas, and wouldn’t have done otherwise, but for all that, he really hated to fly.

He was finding this flight particularly difficult already, and the plane hadn’t even tried to take off yet. For some reason, the airline was convinced he had a business class ticket, meanwhile, John was equally convinced he didn’t. He had been present at the booking of the seat himself, at which time it had been in economy next to the other seat he’d tricked the travel agent’s computer into giving him while the man was looking the other way. This was because he believed was necessary to have space (and somewhere to put any hats he might bring with him), but not too much space, and people to distract him from the horrors of being in the air. John knew himself, and he knew he would not have booked a seat in business by accident. He’d flown a lot (unwillingly, but certainly frequently) and had never once been granted a free seat upgrade to business class from economy. His seat was in economy, economy, _ee-con-oh-me._

He had tried to have this argument at the check-in desk, with limited success according to the number printed on his boarding card. Fortunately John had a record of the seat number he had booked. He had consequently ignored the instructions of the man who had taken his ticket at the plane entrance, and gone to sit in his centre aisle seat, two thirds from the back of the plane, and was now attempting to relax.

More and more people filed in. John took out Sam Jones’s first novel (for a book easily mistaken for ‘Lord of the Rings’, Jones’s second had been remarkably short. Remembering the several occasions he’d been forced to read the landing card or worse the in-flight magazine to pass the time, John had bought the first one as well). He had read an entire page before the young woman who was sitting his row’s window seat showed up. She made a good impression on him almost immediately by grinning and asking whether he was “going home for Christmas, then?” rather than just pretending they weren’t sitting next to each other.

“How do you know I’m not an American heading off on a glamorous London vacation, as you so clearly are?”

“Well, I know now, obviously-”

“Obviously, but before that.”

“Those kind of gave it away,” she said pointing at where he’d once more stretched his feet out into the aisle.

John glanced in the direction she’d indicated to check the spats still looked as elegant and impressive as they had in the morning, which of course they did. “I hope you’re not going to be disappointed by England. Most people don’t wear spats on a regular basis. Not even I do.”

“Next you’re going to tell me you don’t all wear bowler hats and suits all the time.”

“I’m afraid not.”

She pretended to surge to her feet. “Let me off this plane. I’ve been lied to.”

An announcement pinged over the loud speakers. “Would all passengers please take their seats for take-off?” and John’s companion sank back obediently into her seat.

“I think that was directed at me.”

“My brother is actually a keen connoisseur of the bowler hat,” John told her, “but he is the exception.”

“Older or younger?”

“Older.”

“Too old, then. Good looking?”

“Well, I don’t think so, but we do share the same genes so I suppose he must be. I’m John, by the way. I don’t think I said.”

“You didn’t. I’m Juliet-”

Another announcement: “Would passenger John Smith please return to his seat.”

“Is that you?” Juliet asked, as John frowned and determinedly returned to the second page of his book. “Hey,” she said, and poked him.

_“Ow.”_

“Don’t be such a baby. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Passenger John Smith,” the announcement said again, “please return to your seat.”

“If it was me,” John told his companion, “there wouldn’t be an announcement, because I’m sitting in the seat I booked. So, it’s not me, and it must be some other John Smith. Not that I ever told you my surname–”

“You didn’t have to.” Juliet waved his boarding card, which John had put on his spare seat without really thinking about it.

John snatched it back. “Give me that.”

“Excuse me, Mr Smith?”

He turned to look up at a finely coiffed airhostess. “All right,” he told her, _“yes.”_ He turned back to Juliet. “I admit it. My name is John Smith, but I’m in the right seat, and I can prove it.” He began rummaging through his briefcase with one hand, holding up the other to stall the patience of the various women looking at him. “I asked my travel agent to send me the details of this flight by email, electronic mail, very new, very- ah ha,” he withdrew a crumpled sheet of paper and held it aloft triumphantly, “very exciting, and when it arrived at my computer I printed it and brought it with me.” He proffered it first to Juliet and then the airhostess. “In different colours,” he added. “The printer was new, too.”

“I’m sure that was right at the time of booking,” the airhostess said patiently, “but you’ve been granted an upgrade.”

“Why?” John asked her. “I didn’t ask for it.” He turned back to Juliet, who had taken the print out from his outstretched hand and was now studying its psychedelic colours. “Did you get an upgrade?”

“No.”

“Juliet didn’t get an upgrade,” John told the airhostess. “That doesn’t seem fair. I object on grounds of-”

“I think I’ve figured it out, though,” Juliet said.

“So have I,” John said in exasperation. “It’s this man, isn’t it?” He held up ‘The Partial Truth’, by Sam Jones, which had a large black and white picture of the author on the back of its jacket. “He doesn’t understand how I operate. The opera was bad enough, the taxi and the luggage were insulting - who doesn’t have luggage of their own?” he asked Juliet, without waiting for her to answer, “but this is, frankly, a step too far, and you can tell him that, if he’s up there in business. I just want to sit in my own seat. I think that’s very reasonable. Juliet, is that reasonable?”

“Er,” Juliet said, “yes.”

“Thank you,” John said and turned pointedly away from the airhostess, who had clearly been well trained, because she said, “OK, sir. That’s fine. I’ll tell the rest of the cabin crew,” rather than punching him in the face.

A moment passed in which the airhostess walked away, Juliet got out her CD Walkman and John glowered at the back of the seat in front of him. He replayed the conversation in his mind to make sure his points had been clearly made and reasonable, and having come to a hitherto unlooked for conclusion leant across to Juliet’s seat.

“What was it you figured out?”

Juliet pushed her headphones back off her head. “Sorry?”

“What did you figure out?”

She snorted. “Not that, whatever it was. I was just going to say that, according to this,” she picked up John’s print-out, “you’ve got.... one thousand, sorry, one hundred thousand, wow, OK, six hundred and three frequent flier miles.”

“What are they?” John asked, nonplussed. “Some sort of reward scheme?”

“Yeah.” Juliet grinned. “They probably tried to upgrade your seat to get rid of some of them. To stop you some day claiming you owned the whole plane or something.”

“Right,” John said slowly. “Yes, that doesn’t sound entirely unfeasible. Though I still think I’m probably right, on balance.”

“OK,” Juliet said. “Whatever you say.” She screwed up the print-out and threw it at him. “Who’s the guy on the book, then? Boss, or boyfriend?”

“Neither,” John said, straightening the paper out again. He smiled accidentally. “He’s just someone I met last week.”

“Someone whose book you’re reading.”

“That’s right.”

“Who keeps getting you presents.”

“That I neither want, nor expect.”

“He’s cute,” Juliet said, leaning over to get a better look at the photograph. “You could do worse. I know I’d accept his luggage, if you know what I mean.”

John raised an eyebrow, looked back at the photo, and then opened the book so it was facing away from him again. “He’s got a beard now,” he told Juliet.

The rest of the long, long flight passed largely without incident. About thirty minutes after take-off the woman sitting on the other side of John’s aisle asked if she could sit in his business class seat, and John said she could, and Juliet said, “Hey, I didn’t know we could do that.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell your man his attentions are unwanted,” the new occupant of seat 22A said as she hoisted her hand-luggage over her shoulder and departed.

“Thanks,” John said dryly, attempting to feel pleased about the new coat-hanging area that had just opened up to his left.

Juliet fell asleep at about two in the morning, San Francisco time. John finished his first book about an hour later, and, though he knew it was futile, tried to fall asleep himself. After another half an hour he was half way to a panic attack brought on by the low, steady roar of the plane and the whispers of the cabin crew. How could anyone relax enough to go to sleep under these circumstances? They were so clearly in a small metal box hanging in the air. Miracle of modern engineering or not, it still felt like a death trap waiting to snap shut.

He unclipped his seat belt and got up. Just walk it off, he reminded himself. You’re not trapped. It’s just a corridor – filled with people dosing like hens in a battery farm. Ah, no, don’t think like that. And don’t let anyone talk you into another night time flight.

He walked all the way up through economy, past the two sets of grubby toilets, and through the curtain separating the business and first class passengers from everyone else.

The stewardess sitting beside the door unfolded to her feet. “Sorry, sir, you’re not-”

“I do have a ticket,” John told her.

“Well. You’ve changed your tune,” she said with a slight smile. “Mrs Parker’s asleep, I’m afraid. No take-backs.”

“I don’t want the seat,” John said. “I just wanted to walk somewhere- and ideally find someone to talk to.”

“Everyone’s asleep.”

“You’re not. Neither am I. The pilot probably isn’t either.” A thought struck him. “I don’t suppose-”

“No,” she said.

“I’m very good at flying planes,” John told her. “I helped the Wright Brothers get their initial model off the ground. Years later, of course, but I proved it could work. But,” he said, as she raised her eyebrows, “it’s still no, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” John said. He gave the room a final glance. “I’ll find somewhere else to walk.”

“He’s not here,” the stewardess pointed out.

“I know,” John said without bothering to deny knowledge of whom they were talking about. “Pity.”

He wandered back down the plane and folded himself back into his own seat. Juliet cracked an eye open. “Not there?”

“I still think I was right,” John told her. She smiled and shook her head. “Go back to sleep,” John said, and pulled out book two of the Sam Jones Chronicles.

Along with most of the rest of the plane she woke up only as the landing announcements kicked in at local time eleven minutes past ten.

“Are we nearly there yet?” she yawned.

John made a noise he thought could probably still be interpreted as a positive.

“Brilliant. I’m starving.”

John pointed vaguely at the breakfast tray he’d abandoned on the fold-out table of the chair between them an hour ago.

“You don’t want it? Any of it?”

“Go nuts,” he said. He turned another page. A cheerful announcement asking passengers to put on their seatbelts came on over the tannoy. The smell of something that had once been hot and was now simply sweaty reached him from Juliet’s seat.

“Any good?” she asked.

“I feel ill just smelling it,” John told her, “but if you want to eat it-”

“No, I meant the book.”

“Oh-”

“The food is delicious,” she said, forking what might have once been an omelette into her mouth. She swallowed during John’s incredulous look. “Edible anyway. So?” She gestured with another forkful of egg towards the novel.

“I’m very tired,” John told her, “and nauseous, but I think it is, yes.”

“Great!”

“Tolkien was right.”

“What about? All the elves?”

“Never mind.” He closed the book and dropped it back into the open briefcase on his first spare chair.

“Don’t hide an elf conspiracy from me, Johnny.”

John turned his head to give her a deadpan stare. “Are we nearly there yet?”

“Yes,” she said with the air of someone long suffering, and an hour and a half later they were. Juliet filed off into the non-EU citizens queue while John waved his British passport at a bored security officer and wandered over to the baggage reclaim where nothing much was happening yet. He pulled a trolley away from its fellows, and sat down next to the conveyor belt. Eventually it groaned into action. John yawned.

He was too tired to be surprised when Juliet attacked him. “Move over,” she said, squeezing herself into the space between John and the edge of the trolley.

The suitcases from their flight were just now filtering onto the conveyor belt, headed apparently by Juliet’s. She leapt back to her feet.

“Ha. I win,” she said, pulling the small, red case off the belt and onto the floor. “Thanks for playing, though.”

“You are too perky to exist,” John told her. He grimaced as she hit him playfully on the shoulder. “ _Ow._ Stop doing that.”

“You’re just grumpy because you haven’t slept or ate since yesterday.”

“Yes. Except you forgot, _and about to go back to my family home_ ,” John said. “That’s enough to make anyone grumpy. I’m not like this usually, I promise.” He had enough energy left to flick one of his business cards from behind Juliet’s ear. “The bottom number is my English mobile- cell phone number. You don’t have to call me-”

“I don’t want to go out with you.”

“I don’t want to go out with you.”

“No offence, it’s just you’re-”

“Really old,” John finished.

“And kind of gay.”

“Not that gay,” John said defensively. “Not that old either. Not that it matters, because this was an entirely friendly overture, I promise. If England is too disappointing and you want to hang out with someone in spats-”

“Cool,” Juliet said. She pocketed the card. “OK, yeah, maybe I will. See you round. Hey - good luck with the writer.”

John waved her away, and went back to watching the conveyor belt. Eventually, after it seemed that all the other passengers’ luggage must have scrolled past him, his battered, blue, prep-school trunk squeezed its way out between the black plastic flaps. John hauled it off the belt, and onto the trolley, which seemed to buckle under the weight. Fortunately, he didn’t have to push it very far into the terminal before he encountered a wall of taxi drivers holding name cards.

He flashed his passport in the direction of one of the nearest. “John Smith – I think you’re waiting for me.”

“Right,” the man said, lowering his sign, which indicated he’d been waiting for a John Smith who worked for Barclay’s bank. “Here. Let me take care of that, sir.”

“You’re too kind,” John said, as the taxi driver took over his trolley for him.

The midday, mid-December air of London was crisp and chilled, and entirely unlike the air of San Francisco he’d left behind ten hours earlier. John drew his arms around himself and tried to bury as much of his face as possible beneath the collar of his coat.

“What is in this thing?” his taxi driver asked as he manhandled the trunk into the back of his taxi.

“Gold bars,” John told him. “Really,” he said at the man’s incredulous expression, “gold bars. I’ve brought them back from South America to help firm up the bank’s investment portfolio. Shall we go?”

He gave the terminal a quick backwards glance in case the John Smith the driver had really been waiting for was about to arrive, but everything seemed normal. He pulled open the taxi door, and climbed gratefully into the warm, padded interior. About five minutes outside Heathrow he faked a call from head office, telling him not to go back to Canary Wharf, but to head straight to Ealing Broadway and wait for instructions there.

“Whatever you say,” the taxi driver said with what sounded like increasing disbelief at the prospect of gold bars in his boot, and swung the taxi off the motorway towards Ealing.

John napped half-heartedly against the window, and then got out at the end of his street. He assured the driver that Barclay’s would pay, in fact that they had already paid and it was utterly outrageous that he was being charged again, and slammed the door behind him. At the shop on the corner he managed to convince the assistant that he would return later in the day with English money, provided he could take their largest bunch of flowers away with him right now, and dragged his trunk down the frosty street.

Outside his parents’ house, he climbed onto the trunk, slid the spare key off the top of the lintel and let himself in.

“Don’t worry, Christmas is saved. Your favourite son is home.”

Sitting in the chair next to the fireplace, Irving made a point of lowering his paper enough that John could clearly see his raised eyebrows.

“Oh dear,” John said. “How embarrassing. You were never meant to know. Hello!” he said moving into his mother’s hug and away from the rolled up paper that Irving had tried to swipe at him with. “Merry Christmas. Look, I brought you these,” he proffered the flowers.

“Darling, you shouldn’t have.”

“I know, I know. But I’m sure Irving would have done the same.”

“I did,” Irving said from behind the paper again.

“I’ll just put these in water before they fade,” their mother said, moving away slightly slower, John saw, than last time he’d been here. “Across the other side of the house to Irving’s, don’t worry. They won’t be able to see each other. Was it a good flight?”

“Horrible,” John told her, pulling his wallet and keys out of his pockets and dumping them on the kitchen table. “The kettle’s on, isn’t it? My only consolation was that at the end of it I would see you, and, actually- where is daddy?” He knelt to open his trunk, and began sorting through it to find his teabags and the packets of Oreos he’d brought back for Fred. The sound of the kettle hissed from the other room. “Mummy?” John called through an Oreo. “He’s not dead, is he?”

“Walking the dog,” Irving supplied. “I’m sure he would have been here if you’d telephoned with the time you were planning on arriving. Or the date.”

“I did,” John said. He yawned and almost choked on the biscuit. “Didn’t I?”

“No,” Irving said, turning a page with deliberate care. “Everyone thought you were arriving yesterday.”

“Mummy? I said today, didn’t I?” John called.

“It doesn’t matter, you’re here now,” she said, returning from the kitchen with the flowers John hadn’t paid for in a large vase. She frowned at the open trunk and the biscuit crumbs on the carpet. “Oh, _Theo_ , how many times? I’ve asked you before to wait until you’re in the guest bedroom before you empty all your possessions over the floor. Do you do this in your own home?” She pushed his camera and a pile of shirts to the side with her foot so as to get past into the hall. The paper Irving was hiding behind took on a distinctly smug air.

“Did you try that hypnotherapy I suggested?” she called from the hallway. “I’ve heard that really helps nervous fliers.”

“Yes,” John said, which caused the paper to lower. “I went... oh, it must have been about half a dozen times, I think, before they told me to stop going. I’m afraid,” he said, packing things back into the trunk, “I’m a hopeless case.”

Irving raised an eyebrow. “You can say that again.”

“My fear of flying is intrinsically linked to a past life where I fell to my - Oh come on,” John hissed as Irving continued to stare sardonically at him. “I’d like to see you go to a hypnotherapist.”

“Sorry, darling, I didn’t get that last bit,” their mother said, returning to the living room.

John flicked the catches on his trunk closed again. “I suggested Irving should see a hypnotherapist in case there’s a way he can stop being such a git. I suspect, however, that like my fear of flying, it’s incurable.”

“Very droll,” Irving said.

John grinned at him and moved into the kitchen. He made tea three mugs of tea, crammed the sandwich that had obviously been made for him into his mouth, and returned to the living room, where his mother was saying, “if you don’t stop fighting, I don’t know how you’re going to enjoy tonight.”

“Very easily,” Irving said, ignoring the mug of tea John placed pointedly on the mantelpiece next to him, “I’m not taking him.”

“Now, dear-”

“I mean it. Anyway, Theo undoubtedly has his own plans-”

“Irving, I’m not having him sitting outside in that queue in the middle of winter-”

“I am here,” John pointed out. “I can hear you. And I’m nearly forty. I can sit outside an opera house if I want to, with or without my mother’s permission.”

“There, you see?” Irving said. “He can make his own decisions, even if he doesn’t know how old he is.”

“I’m too tired to go anywhere tonight, anyway,” John said. He gave a large yawn that was only half fake. “I think I’m just going to go upstairs and sleep. Don’t worry, I’ll be down for dinner.”

“I,” Irving said, “on the other hand, will not. If you’ll excuse me,” he said, getting to his feet, “I have to make some phone calls. I’m sure I can find someone willing to sit in the _grand tier_ at short notice.”

John tried to elicit a sympathetic look from his mother as he exited mournfully with his trunk and his tea, but she seemed to think he’d got what he deserved and only said, “Dinner’s at seven,” before turning on the television.

Out in the hall Irving was saying, “Yes, tonight,” into a slim mobile phone while he rearranged John’s flowers with his left hand into a more aesthetically pleasing arrangement. “Der Rosenkavalier... no, Strauss- _Strauss_. Hold on a moment,” he covered the phone with his hand. “There’s a package for you on the upper landing table,” he told John. “I signed for it this morning. Something from your university apparently.”

“It doesn’t matter,” John said. “How can anything matter when someone who doesn’t even know who wrote Der Rosenkavalier will be sitting in my seat tonight at seven thirty?”

“You hate Strauss,” Irving reminded him with a smile.

“At least I know I do,” John said, beginning to drag his trunk up the stairs. “I hope they snore. Loudly.”

He took a quick and, as it turned out, cold shower, set the alarm clock for half past five, and fell asleep in a bed that had been his twenty years ago.

At six o’clock sharp there was a rapping at his door, and from the other side Irving’s voice said, “All right, I take it back. You can come.”

He stepped back as John pulled the door open and swept out into the hallway.

“That’s very good news,” John told him as he passed. “I would have looked a complete idiot at dinner, unless Mummy’s changed the dress code quite dramatically since I was last here.”

There had been some serious lowering of standards in the opera-going community over the last twenty years as regards to dress, but fortunately the degradation had yet to reach the Smith household. John caught up his previously ignored FedEx box with white-gloved hands, and as he descended the stairs with it his favourite red-lined cape billowed behind him.

A large blond ball of fur that had a dog somewhere underneath it attacked him as he entered the living room. John rubbed its ears and let it follow him over to the dining room, where his mother was laying out cutlery.

“It looks like I won’t be in for dinner after all,” he told her, borrowing one of the knives and sitting down in the nearest chair with his parcel.

“Oh good. Irving relented then?”

“He looked so sad,” Irving said, brushing imaginary dust from his top hat.

John grinned, and pulled out a handkerchief. “Here, Bates,” he told the dog, laying the handkerchief over his lap, “drool on that. There’s a good boy.”

“Are you sure you want to do that now?” Irving asked peevishly as John began to cut his way into the package with the kitchen knife. “The taxi’s going to be here any minute. I told you about the package three hours ago, and I’m sure it could wait another three, no trouble at all. Or four, come to that.”

“Oh my god,” John said.

Irving turned to look at him, but then the crunch of gravel from outside made him turn back to the window. “What did I tell you?” he said, drawing on his hat. “It’s here. Come on.”

“They sent me a laptop,” John said, lifting it out of the box. “A real laptop.” He opened the screen, and pressed the power button. “A real laptop,” he repeated as it began to whirr to life. “Cambridge wouldn’t even lend me a pen.”

“Fascinating,” Irving said. He kissed his mother quickly on the cheek as she passed by him into the hallway with a wave and an entreaty to be good. “Have a lovely evening. Theo, come on... Theo- _John,_ ” he tried, when he already had the door open and John still hadn’t moved demonstrably. “We’ll be late.”

“It’s only thirty minutes away,” John said absently. He scanned down the Chancellor’s attached letter. “Forty maximum, or fifty, well, more like an hour in rush-”

The sound of his laptop shutting in the middle of its first boot took him by surprise. Irving dragged him bodily upwards by the elbow. The dog whined as its comfortable resting place was yanked away, and ran off into the hallway.

“That might have really damaged the systems,” John pointed out as he scooped the laptop up.

“I’m sorry,” Irving said with what sounded almost like sincerity.

“Don’t leave the door open,” their mother called from the living room.

“You can check if it’s damaged when you get back,” Irving pointed out.

“No, no, it’s all right, I can check in the cab.”

“You’re not taking a computer to the opera.”

“It’s a portable computer,” John told him, trying to get around Irving, who was now, despite his stated desire to leave, blocking the door. “That’s the point of it. Get off-”

“What are you going to do with it during the performance?” Irving pointed out. The waiting taxi driver beeped his horn several times. “What if somebody steals it?”

The back of John’s throat made a noise that he hadn’t asked it to make as Irving pulled the laptop out of his hands and carried it back to its box.

Their father emerged from the living room in the process of clipping Beethoven’s lead to his collar. “He thinks it’s walkies again,” he explained of the dog, as he manoeuvred around his sons towards the hat stand. “People shouldn’t open the door if they don’t want to go for a walk. That’s his philosophy.”

“We’re on our way out,” Irving said, holding the door open for him.

“Fine, fine,” their father said. He patted his pockets to check the keys were there. “That’s fine.” He clapped John on the shoulder as he passed. “Nice to see you’re not dead, Theo. Plane didn’t fall out of the sky, then?”

“Not this time.”

“Glad to hear it. I’ll be awake when you get back, if it’s not too late.”

“It’s a short opera,” Irving said.

“Well, that could mean anything,” their father said, “I know what you boys are like.” He waved and followed Beethoven down the driveway.

Despite the three minutes lost to laptop-admiration, they reached the opera house in good time. John passed Irving all the English money he had on him and climbed out of the cab.

The main entrance was busy with reasonably well-dressed people hurrying up the steps and into the warmth and light of the foyer. John adjusted his hat so it cut a more dashing angle, and wandered up to talk to Asha, the young woman inspecting tickets at the door. Far more than he had in his childhood home or the city’s biggest airport, he felt like he was in London, a stone’s throw from Trafalgar Square on one side and St Paul’s on the other. Home was just home, and an airport was just an airport. The point of going anywhere was to see and do things that you couldn’t put ‘just’ in front of.

Irving tapped him on the shoulder, John told Asha that he hoped her piano recital went well, and they moved into the foyer and straight through to what were almost the best seats in the house.

“Not bad at all,” John declared, switching his phone off and stowing it in his jacket pocket. “I mean you could have got something a little more central-”

“You’re welcome,” Irving told him.

John smiled and pulled out his modified opera glasses. “Thank you,” he said, peering through them into the still-arriving crowd to take some of the levity out of his gratitude. “I do appreciate it, you know.”

“That’s why I brought you,” Irving said. “It would have been dreadful to have someone-”

“Oh... wait, hang on a minute,” John said, “what have we here?” He twisted the magnification button on the side of the glasses, but the light was still too bad. He handed the glasses to Irving. “Could I have a second opinion, please? Is that who I think it is?”

“I have no idea,” Irving said, dutifully peering across the other side of the circle. “Who am I supposed to be looking at? I think that’s Sir Elton-”

“No, no,” John said, “next to him.” He foraged around inside his jacket. “The man without the beard. Is it this man?”

Irving glanced down at the dust jacket of ‘Guardian of Time’ by Sam Jones, and then back through the opera glasses. “Yes,” he said.

“I knew it,” John said. He reached for the glasses, but Irving batted his hand away.

“What?” John demanded as Irving began to chuckle.

“Nothing,” Irving said, “well, nothing really. It’s just I believe I’m also looking at the man who delivered your new laptop earlier today.” He adjusted the settings of the glasses. “It’s difficult to be sure, because of the spectacles, and he had a beard, then, and a uniform-”

John pulled the glasses forcibly away from him. “I’m fairly sure Sam Jones doesn’t work part-time for the FedEx corporation,” he said, reversing Irving’s changes to the zoom. “His father owns half of Visa.”

“Well, then, that is a strange coincidence I find myself unable to explain,” Irving said. “No stranger, however, than you owning a book of fiction. I didn’t know you read books.”

“I don’t,” John said, “normally, but- Sorry, that was an insult, wasn’t it?”

“It’s all right,” Irving said, “you don’t need to respond to them all. I can see you’re distracted.”

John frowned, raised the glasses again and lowered them. “You didn’t know I read books.”

“That’s right. Would you like me to give you your cue again?” Irving asked.

“No, it’s not necessary. I’m just wondering why you gave me a first edition of Hound of the Baskervilles for Christmas last year if you knew I didn’t read books.”

“I was being encouraging,” Irving said smoothly, “naturally.”

“Really,” John said. Irving nodded.

“That’s interesting,” John told him. “I wonder if you could help me with this one, too.”

“I’ll do my best, of course.”

“Do you, by any chance, know what happened to my first edition of Hound of the Baskervilles? You see, I came downstairs on the morning of the twenty-seventh, hours away from flying back to China and it was gone. The jumper Daddy got me wasn’t gone, but of the hound and the Baskervilles there was no sign. Not so much as a stray endpaper.”

“An intriguing mystery,” Irving agreed. “One for the great detective himself. Incidentally, you’ll no doubt be delighted to discover, that this Christmas you’ll be receiving a signed copy of Dracula. I thought you’d like that, and you can drop round whenever you like to admire it.”

“What kind of brother are you?”

“Oh, and what did you get me this year?” Irving asked. “Socks? Again?”

“You like socks,” John pointed out, returning to the opera glasses now the main bulk of the argument was over. “You wear them every day.”

“Yes, thank you,” Irving said dryly.

“Did you advise Mummy to get me the Horse Whisperer, too?” John asked. He flicked his eyes right to catch Irving’s lips twitching into a smile. “I knew you did.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Excessively,” John said. “Thank you.”

“Is he doing anything interesting?”

“Who, Nicholas Evans? Writing another book probably-”

_“Mr Jones.”_

“Oh,” John said. “No, not really. Not at the moment anyway. Just reading the libretto. Probably so he has some idea of what the plot is going to be.”

“You don’t think someone at the opera with Elton John cares about the piece.”

“He’s not here with Elton John,” John said, having assessed the body language of everyone in the box opposite quite thoroughly by now. “They’re just sitting next to each other. And he isn’t here for the opera. He doesn’t know anything about opera. He’s only here to spy on me.”

“I see,” Irving said. “So you think he’s with the beautiful woman on his other side, do you?”

“Yes,” John said. “Not _with her_ with her, mind you, he’s just... with her at the moment. She’s probably his sister-”

_“Well-”_

“Unless he doesn’t have a sister, in which case-”

“You don’t even know whether he has a sister?” Irving asked. “I can’t believe I thought this was important, but you don’t even know this man.”

“I know he’s more interested in other men than in beautiful women,” John told him, “and before you ask how I know that-”

“I would never ask that,” Irving said.

“ _Very_ personal experience,” John told him.

“Yes, thank you.”

“In a cupboard after everyone else had gone home.”

Irving made a small _ugh_ noise and turned away as though this was going to help him forget. Having presumably established that it wouldn’t, he turned back. “The only way I’m going to forgive you for saying that is if you introduce me to the probably sister in the interval and we, that’s me and the sister, not you and me, end up at L’Anima tomorrow night as a direct consequence.”

“I thought you were still hung up on Fred,” John said, watching Sam Jones polish his reading glasses and laugh at something the woman with him had said.

“Well, I’m not,” Irving said.

Across the auditorium Sam had replaced his glasses and was now saying something about the show they were about to see, or the opera house, or something entirely different. Whatever it was, it was making him grin and gesture around himself. After a while he leant towards his companion to look at something.

“You’re definitely not hung up on her,” John repeated, only half concentrating on the conversation. “You’re quite sure about that?”

“Yes. Why?” Irving asked, trying without much success to sound uninterested. “Has she... been talking to you about me?”

“No,” John said. “It’s just I’d almost certainly have more luck convincing her to go out with you- given that I have some experience in that department.”

“I don’t think I need any help from the man Fred left in Peru because she couldn’t bear him any more,” Irving said. He pulled the opera glasses away from John again. “I’ve moved on.”

_“Irving-”_

“Or at least,” he said, holding the glasses away from John, who stood up to try and reach them, “I would have, if I’d been interested in dating your friend, but I’m- _ow!”_ John had jabbed him in the waist with his knee in an attempt to climb over him. “What are you, a child?”

“They’re _my_ opera glasses,” John said, yanking them back, or attempting to.

“It’s interesting that you would bring up ownership,” Irving retorted, swatting at John with his heavy programme, “because I remember them being _mine,_ ” he lost hold of the programme, but kept the glasses, “before you _stole_ and modified them- ”

“ _You,_ ” John thwacked him back, “ _gave_ them to me.”

 _“For the evening,”_ Irving said, “I’m terribly sorry madam, _five years ago.”_ He pushed John backwards with a foot, and raised the opera glasses to his eyes with an attempt at dignity. “Shit,” he said, “he’s looking. _Get down.”_

They both dropped below the lip of the circle. John reached over and carefully took Irving’s top hat from him and put it on the seat.

“Thank you,” Irving said seriously, which for some reason was what started both of them laughing.

“How long do you think we have to stay here?” John asked.

“Probably best to wait until the lights go down,” Irving said. He consulted his watch. “It shouldn’t be too long now.”

John sighed. “If only we hadn’t left so mindlessly early, this would never have happened.” This reminiscence earned him another smack on the nose with the programme. He rubbed the nose and sighed again more genuinely. “I wonder how my laptop is getting on without me...”

“You’re going to keep it then?” Irving asked, beginning to actually read the programme at last.

“Of course,” John said. “I kept your opera glas- ah, it’s starting.”

Act One was light and reasonably amusing. The dancing was a bit of a mess, but the chorus were in fine voice, as were the main cast. If John found his mind wandering from time to time it was only because he’d seen the thing before and hadn’t liked it much then. Sam almost certainly wouldn’t have been as distracting if it had been an Italian. In fact, he was doing his best to be unremarkable. He didn’t fidget or talk to the woman next to him, or so much as shift his gaze from singers to libretto. He clapped at the end of songs, but everyone else was doing it, so it would have been unfair to single him out for disrupting the flow. Then, in the scene change between Acts One and Two he stood up and left the box.

John got up too, and excused his way past the other people on his row.

“What are you doing?” Irving hissed. “You know they’ll be starting again in a minute.”

“I’ll be right back,” John said, catching sight of Irving throwing up his hands as he left.

He walked quickly around the outside of the tier, and pushed his way into the gentleman’s bathroom. It was empty. John leant against one of the rows of white sinks, examined his teeth in the mirror behind him, and after a moment there was the sound of a flush and the click of a lock and Sam Jones walked out into the bathroom and did the most comically real double take John had ever seen.

“Hey,” he said. “Er- what’re you doing here? You’ll miss the second act.”

“I could ask you the same question,” John told him, as Sam washed his hands, “but it would be waste of time as I already know you followed me from San Francisco. Likewise, I followed you when I saw you leaving, which you must have guessed, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask something as banal as that, and instead opted to tell me how pleased you were to see me, particularly looking so debonair on about three hours sleep.”

“It doesn’t show,” Sam told him.

“You’re too kind,” John said, smiling as though it hardly mattered to him, one way or the other. “You’re also looking quite disgustingly handsome. At least that’s what I’d be forced to tell you if you had complimented me first, but as it is, I’m going to have to pretend I dropped by to use the facilities, and just hope you think of something more interesting to do than leave.”

“You’re not going to tell me I shouldn’t have come?”

“You mean you followed me from San Francisco?” John asked in a horrified tone of voice. “We’re back in this conversation again,” he explained, “where I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“OK. You know, I came with my family, though,” Sam said. “Like I told you.”

“Nice try,” John said, grinning and backing away, “but neither version of me is going to believe that.”

Sam laughed, balled up his hand-towels and threw them accurately into the bin in the corner. “Come on. You must have seen my sister. She’s been sitting next to me for the last hour. The really pretty, slightly cross looking one?” John arched an eyebrow. “And, I swear,” Sam added, “my parents are back at the hotel- This visit has been planned for months.”

“Oh really?” John demanded. He broke character briefly, to add, “You’re supposed to be following me.”

“Which one?” Sam asked.

“Both,” John said, “either. It doesn’t really matter at this point as long as we end up together in that stall in the next minute.”

“Let me guess, the opera house is on fire?”

“Well - it worked last time.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “but I was young and naïve back then. And I wasn’t about to miss the crucial second act of Strauss’s comic masterpiece. I really want to hear how Minnie Nast handles _Mir ist die Ehre widerfahren._ ”

John made a face. “No, you don’t.”

“Sure I do,” Sam said. “The Independent said she didn’t sell it last night, but, like I told her, they’re soulless cretins, who wouldn’t know good music-”

“No, no, no,” John said, “I’m sorry, no.” Sam looked at him patiently. “It doesn’t make sense. You see,” John told him, “I actually know Minnie, so it’s a really stupid thing to lie about, because I can just ask her-”

“I guess I’m not lying then.”

“Of course you-”

Sam laughed. “I’m not-”

“How does it go?” John asked. “The famous duet? Go on-”

“Rather than going out there and listening to Minnie and Eva sing it, you want to stand in a bathroom and listen to-”

“And listen to you embarrassing yourself, yes.”

“OK,” Sam said, utterly confident. “We’ll see who’s embarrassed,” he said, and pushed himself away from the bank of sinks he’d been leaning against. “It goes something like this, only a bit higher- well, quite a lot higher- _Wie himmlische, nicht irdische, wie Rosen vom hochheiligen Paradies...”_

Nobody would have called Sam Jones a singer, not a good singer anyway, and they certainly wouldn’t have cast him as the soprano heroine of a romantic comedy, if they’d had any sense. But he had almost the right notes, arranged in approximately the right order, and it was clear he understood the German, and that he was an expressive speaker... John curled his fingers around the lip of the sink unit.

Sam stopped at the end of Sophie’s first verse, (“ _Zieht einen nach, als lägen Stricke um das Herz”_ ), which was good because John was fairly sure he wouldn’t have been able to take much more of it.

“That has to be the sexiest thing I have ever heard,” he told Sam.

Sam laughed, and then saw the hand John was still using to grip the edge of the sink unit. He stepped closer. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m serious,” John said seriously, and released his hold on the unit behind him so he could pull Sam into a kiss before he objected. Rather than objecting, Sam dragged him back into an open stall, and pushed him up against the closing door.

“I can’t believe that did it for you, even you,” he said, unzipping John’s flies and inserting his hand in one well-practiced movement.

“You didn’t hear you,” John told him, pushing up against him, “or see you”. His own hands were less sure than Sam’s, particularly now Sam was stroking him and his body was trembling, but he managed to get Sam’s trousers open. “I have, honestly, never heard anything sexier-”

“Go on,” Sam urged breathily into John’s neck.

“-and I have heard some spectacularly sexy thing in my life,” John told him, gripping the shoulder of Sam’s tux jacket with the hand that wasn’t jerking his cock. “In New Zealand, I met this woman who-”

Sam kissed him, his tongue pushing deep and possessively into John’s mouth.

“-told me she could,” John continued in the time between Sam pulling away and Sam kissing him again.

He came gasping into Sam’s mouth with almost the full weight of Sam’s body pressing him securely into the door. A moment later he felt Sam shudder against him and then the warm wetness of his semen. Then Sam pulled back, so they could breath more easily and John could finish his anecdote.

“-make a man ejaculate-”

Sam kissed him again, more gently this time, sucking on his bottom lip. “Take the hint,” he suggested.

“What hint?” John asked, but he let Sam roll his eyes and go about the business of cleaning up without ever telling him what the woman in New Zealand had said. He observed to himself that he had rather skilfully got away without explaining what it was that had ‘done it for him’, which could essentially be boiled down to - the mix of competence and failure, confidence and vulnerability, the thrill of being sung so meaningfully to, even the song was intended for another and by Strauss, and how incredibly ridiculous and adorable it was for a large, handsome and clever man to sing a young girl’s love song in a bathroom. He would have liked to have shared this with Sam, but that would have ruined it, and would almost certainly have prevented them having sex.

Now it was over, he allowed himself a smirk as he rinsed his hands and followed Sam out of the bathroom. The smirk turned into a frown when, on their exit, Sam headed immediately for the door to his box. He was still frowning when Sam turned back to him.

“How long till the end of the Act?”

John turned his frown into one of concentration. “Er - about-” He thought about it. Twenty two minutes, give or take the length of time to change the set.

“I mean,” Sam said, “is there any point in me returning to my seat? In your opinion, that is. I don’t want to disturb anyone without reason.” He wore a large, gold watch around his wrist, and had already proved he had some knowledge of the opera’s structure, so John told him the truth, rather than fall into his transparent trap.

“You’ve probably missed _Mir ist die Ehre widerfahren_ , but the Independent were probably right, and personally I’d prefer to get started on the interval drinks anyway. Vigorous exercise always makes me thirsty.” He felt the smirk creep back onto his face. “The drinking is going to be easier with you there, since I gave away all my money not an hour ago, but I’m sure I can work something out without you. My brother probably has a long-standing tab.”

Without waiting to see what Sam did, he left for the bar, which was large and opulent on this level, full of squishy chairs and low drinks tables. John sat down in one of the chairs, and put his feet up on one of the drinks tables. He got out the ‘Guardian of Time’ dust jacket, and pretended to read the absent book until Sam set a glass and a bottle of champagne down next to his feet.

“No spats today, I see,” Sam observed as he sat, gesturing with his glass at John’s shiny shoes.

“Mm.” John drained half of his glass and shook his head. “Too much. One has to have limits.”

“I thought yours began at spats.”

“Irving told me I looked like Erik, the Phantom of the Opera last time I wore them with this outfit.”

“Irving is.... your brother,” Sam supplied.

“Yes,” John said, smiling to show he knew Sam already knew that.

“And you’re not?” Sam asked.

“Not what? Not my brother?”

“Not trying to look like the Phantom,” Sam said. “I saw you come in, in the coat and the hat, and I figured- But you’re not.”

“No,” John said. He moved his feet from the table to Sam’s legs. “He’s trying to look like me.”

Sam shifted in his seat slightly to optimise the angle of conversation, but didn’t move the shoes from his clean trousers. “I see,” he said amiably. He held out the champagne bottle, and John allowed him to refill his glass.

“You know I remember that being a lot thicker,” Sam said, gesturing at the jacket of his book as he leant forward to replace the bottle on the table.

“So do I,” John agreed. “That’s why I left the rest of it at home. It wouldn’t fit in my jacket.”

“I didn’t realise it was so profoundly affecting.”

“I needed the picture to help identify my stalker to police and passers-by,” John explained. Sam nodded, as though this was only right, which it was, partly, but John nevertheless felt the need to add, “I enjoyed the words inside, too. When they were still there.”

“Profoundly?” Sam asked. “No. Don’t answer that,” he decided. “I know it isn’t profound. But I could do profound if profound was required.”

“Yes, I think so too,” John told him.

“You agree that I could be profound?”

“I agree that you could potentially be profound, yes,” John said, “or at least profoundly affect people, which is different and possibly better. There are bits in this,” he indicated the dust jacket, “that are really very beautiful.”

_“Bits?”_

“Bits,” John repeated. “Admittedly large bits,” he smiled, “that comprised most of the book- I think, anyway. I was very tired when I read it. And nauseous.”

 _“Nauseated,”_ Sam corrected, with a flicker of a grimace in his grin that suggested he thought this was probably a mistake.

“I’m sorry?”

“You meant-”

“I know what you were saying,” John told him. “I was suggesting some words for your apology.”

“How about ‘I was wrong’ for yours?”

“You don’t think nauseous entering-”

“-common parlance excuses it?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“I see,” John said. He took another contemplative sip of champagne. “I like the ability of language to evolve.”

“Rather than describe things precisely.”

John made a face, half annoyance and half amusement. “We have numbers for that. And cameras. Besides, you knew what I meant.”

“I did,” Sam agreed. “Did my book make you sick?”

“Just the flying,” John told him. “And the bit in the cave.”

“Yeah, everyone hates that bit. Sorry.”

John waved the apology away with one hand, and pulled out his watch with the other. “Almost interval time,” he observed.

“Should I get another bottle before the crowds descend?”

“Don’t bother. In the unlikely event of us finishing this one before the interval starts, I’m sure Irving can be prevailed upon to queue,” John told him, examining the watch more closely in case it had any other secrets to divulge, which it didn’t.

“Not going to tell me how good my book was now, huh?”

“No,” John said, pocketing the watch again. “Why? Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “Obviously. I like hearing my work praised as much as anyone – more probably. You said you liked _bits_. Which bits?”

“The bits... with the quest,” John said thoughtfully. “Oh, come on,” he said, as Sam mock-collapsed back into his chair, “you don’t need me, a man who would happily say ‘nauseous’ when he means ‘nauseated’, to tell you that you write well. Some people I’ve never heard of gave you a prize, didn’t they, and,” he removed his feet from Sam’s legs to the floor so he could bend and reach the dust jacket, “this woman, Georgia Knight, whoever she is-”

“-a very famous literary critic-”

“Thank you, says, and I quote, Sam Jones is an exciting new voice in fantasy. And Lowell Edward Gates says the beauty of his prose-”

“-often reduces me to a weeping wreck of a man. I have to go out and buy a tub of ice cream and look at a concrete building to get over it. Yeah, I know.”

“Actually it doesn’t say that bit about the ice cream,” John said holding the dust jacket out to him. “Otherwise very good recall.”

Sam took the cover between two fingers and twisted it towards himself. “Huh. I must have asked for that bit to be removed. I know all my reviews by heart,” he admitted, “even the ones my father paid for, like that piece of crap.”

“Your father _paid_ people to review you-”

“He did. Well, I asked him to,” Sam explained. “A writer’s got to become known somehow. Of course,” he said, placing the dust jacket back on the table with exaggerated care, “if I’d known how wrong it was going to go, I would have done it myself under various pseudonyms. ‘The Partial Truth is quite good, writes Pam Bones. You’ll probably like it if you like books by people who aren’t that bad at writing’, you know, that sort of thing. I don’t know,” he said as John laughed, “I guess it did work. People like Knight reviewed Guardian when it came out.”

“And the prize?”

“Legit, as far as I know.”

“Good.”

“I hope so anyway. They gave me some really ugly statuette thing that I’m proudly displaying in my living room.”

“Lucky you.”

“I deserved it. Prize and famous critics aside, though,” Sam said, “I’d still like to hear what you thought about it. Please. It would mean a lot to me,” he added, somewhat redundantly because it was quite obvious that it would mean a lot to him. Few people had as high an opinion of their own interestingness as John Smith, but even he found the way Sam Jones was looking at him to be unusual, and as unsettling as it was pleasing.

“You can tell me what was bad about it as well, obviously,” Sam said with an attempt at levity that still slid perilously close to sincerity. “The next one’s about forty thousand words along. It’d be nice not to make the same mistakes again, so any strong feelings you had-”

“I’d need the bit with the words,” John said, “for reference, to do it properly. But,” he said, “but, but, no, I remember the beginning was very good. It was about three in the morning, and I was very grateful that things were already happening on page one- or five, or whatever it was. I liked Kori right away, that’s- Ah, Irving, there you are- very important.”

“I know,” Irving said, sitting on the arm of John’s chair between him and Sam, “how tedious of me to be exactly where I was supposed to be all this time. I’m sorry, Mr Jones, how nice to meet you properly,” he told Sam, holding out his hand. “Irving Smith, Theo’s brother.”

“ _Irving,”_ John said warningly, as Sam said,

“I’m sorry, have we-?”

“I had the pleasure of hearing you talk at the London Book Fair last year,” Irving said, smiling kindly at him like an old uncle.

“Oh,” Sam said, obviously relaxing, “that - that was not my best speech ever. I doubt it was much of a pleasure, but thanks for saying so. That appointment came out of nowhere, I mostly made up my talk on the way to the exhibition centre.”

“No one in the audience had the slightest notion, I assure you,” Irving said, removing the burden of John’s champagne glass from him and refilling it for himself. “And I, at least, purchased your latest as a direct result of that event.”

“Well, I hope you enjoyed it more than the talk.”

“Tremendously,” Irving said, “though, it has to be said, I preferred your debut. Very funny, I don’t know that I’ve laughed so much before or since. Guardian of Time was a little too genre for my tastes.”

“Campus novel is a genre,” John put in, rather sourly, from behind Irving’s back.

“I’m sorry, Theo,” Irving said, twisting round, “what was that? It sounded as though you had a thought about a book that wasn’t directly related to its value as a coaster.”

“Perhaps you’d like to tell us what exactly so un-genre about the new Dracula-shaped teapot stand you’ve giving me for-”

“Sorry,” Sam said, getting out of his seat, “my sister’s at the bar. I’ll be right back.”

Irving slid into the vacated chair, and sipped delicately at his champagne. “I hope you’re not really thinking of defacing a first edition, signed by Stoker and with a personal dedication to the wife of W. S. Gilbert.”

“I suppose not,” John said, “if it is signed to Lucy. I’ve always been very fond of her. How was act two?”

“Exquisite. Minnie put in a quite beautiful performance. I had tears in my eyes. And how is the stalker?”

“He claims to be here on an entirely unrelated matter.”

“Perhaps he is.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” John said. Across the room Sam was exchanging money for a glass of red wine. Once again, he seemed to be finding something very funny. “I know that’s difficult for you.”

“I’m afraid you may have us confused, Theo.”

“No, I don’t think so. Now, they’re on their way back. If you could try not to monopolise the conversation this time-”

“I do apologise.”

“-and remember that I haven’t gone by Theodore for the last thirty years, I would appreciate it... and potentially work out a way for you to date Sam’s sister.”

“Done,” Irving said. He stood up, smiling. “Please allow me,” he said, offering the vacated seat to the beautiful woman who was now definitely confirmed as Sam’s sister.

“Thanks,” she said, with a wide smile, “but I’d really prefer to stand. I feel like I’ve been sitting since time immemorial.”

“Quite right,” Irving said. “John, why don’t you-”

“I’m fine, thank you,” John said from his seat.

“Ally, this is Irving Smith, head of the British civil service,” Sam explained without having been told this information, “and his brother, Doctor John Smith, who is a colleague of mine at Berkeley. John, Irving, I’d like you to meet my long-suffering sister, Alice.”

“Long suffering?” Irving asked. “Surely-”

 _“Three hours,”_ she said, “and this is a short one. If you ask me, they could have cut that whole thing with the rose-”

“Ally isn’t a big fan of the opera,” Sam said, wrapping an arm around her, “but she’s been kind enough to accompany me here for the last four years.”

“Five years,” she said wearily. “Remember, Dad had just closed the Royce deal, and then we went to out to see the thing with all the elephants as a _reward.”_

“1991, you’re right.”

“Ah yes, I remember that Aida,” Irving said. “I thought it was rather well done, and, of course, John was in tears by the end-”

“This isn’t better,” John said, getting to his feet. “It was lovely to meet you,” he told Alice. “Sam, you’re sitting with me in the second half, aren’t you?”

Irving stopped him as he made to leave. “I’d imagined something more subtle,” he said under his breath.

“I don’t know why,” John said.

“Good point,” Irving agreed, and let him go. John returned to the box Irving had booked, only slightly off centre, and in a while Sam joined him.

“I hope your sister doesn’t mind,” John said. “You see I promised Irving I’d introduce them-”

“Difficult when you hadn’t met her yet.”

“I know,” John said. “I had to do the best I could with extremely limited resources. I think it all worked out for the best, though.”

“It does seem that way,” Sam agreed. His left knee was touching John’s right despite the relatively wide gaps between the chairs.

“For them,” John said. He reached down for the programme Irving had left on floor and when he sat up again they weren’t touching any more. For some reason that seemed worse than the sex in the cupboard or the toilet cubicle. The sex was physical and according to some people who probably weren’t to be trusted something that could and did happen to Sam frequently at parties. Knee-touching, on the other hand, was genuinely intimate and something he, John shouldn’t engage in unless he wanted to see Sam Jones repeatedly and romantically over the next few months, and he still wasn’t sure that he did. Was the England-trip romantic or creepy? (It certainly wasn’t planned far in advance with his family, no matter how good a liar his sister was). Was the interest Sam had in him flattering or smothering? John was used to knowing what he thought about things. Sam Jones threw him a little. He was either something very good or very bad, but it was difficult to know which at this stage.

Absent-mindedly John let Sam talk about how much he loved (or claimed to love) the music of Strauss while the rest of the audience filed back in. The third act was much like the first, except that he watched more of it because it was only Irving in the box across the auditorium. At the end of the show he realised belatedly that although their knees were no longer touching, their feet were.

“Coming backstage?” he asked as they made their exit.

“It sounds lovely,” Sam said, “but I think I should probably find my sister, and go back to the hotel.”

“I’ll help you look,” John offered.

“No, it’s fine. You go-”

“That’s her, isn’t it, getting into a taxi with Irving?”

Sam swore and made it a few steps towards the taxi before he realised he wasn’t going to be able to catch it. “I can’t believe she’d just go like that,” he said, returning to John’s side. “Even Alice would think twice before- I mean, she’s got the room card. How am I even supposed to get in?”

“They’ll be able to programme another card,” John told him. “They must recognise you-”

“I arrived yesterday. With a beard.”

“But you can prove who you are-”

“How?” Sam asked. “I left all my stuff back in the room, except the tickets, which I used, and some money, which I spent, except for,” he dug through his pockets and pulled out a note, “twenty pounds. And that won’t get me another hotel room. What?” he asked as John gave him an appraising look. “London’s full of pickpockets. Everyone knows that.”

“You’ve been reading too much Dickens,” John said, “and before you ask, when I was twelve we went on a family holiday to Scotland where it did nothing but rain, there was nothing to do, so I did nothing but read Dickens all week. I’ve read the lot, except Martin Chuzzlewick. I couldn’t get through that American bit, I’m sorry.”

“For a man who doesn’t read, you’re not doing too badly,” Sam said with a slight grin even in his distress.

“Don’t worry about your sister,” John told him reassuringly. “I’ll ring Irving, and get him to bring her back.” He reached into his right hand pocket for his phone, which wasn’t there. John always kept whatever phone he was currently using in his right hand jacket pocket, so he could get at it easily, but just in case he’d been distracted when he’d put it away he tried his left pocket, which had his watch and his keys in it, but no phone. Then he tried his inside jacket pocket, which was empty, and the pockets on his trousers, before remembering that these trousers didn’t have pockets.

“Excuse me,” he said to Sam, and turned on his heel back into the opera house. He ran back up to the grand tier, and into the box. A quick search of the floor revealed that nothing out of place. He returned to the bar, where Sam was standing looking slightly bemused.

“Are you OK?”

“No,” John said, moving the chair he’d sat on earlier to one side. “My phone’s missing. So I can’t call Irving- or the taxi company he has an account with. And if I can’t call Irving or Irving’s taxi company, then I’m going to have to walk home and it’s a long way back to Ealing.” He moved the chair Sam and briefly Irving had sat on, and discovered the dust jacket of Sam’s book. “This is yours,” he said, handing it over.

“Er, thanks,” Sam said. “Look, can’t you just use the opera house phone? I don’t think they’d mind- Hey,” he called to the man working behind the bar, “you’ve got a phone, right?”

“No, no, Sam, it’s fine,” John said. “It’s fine.”

“What was that about?” Sam said, as John led him back down the stairs.

“ _I_... don’t remember Irving’s phone number,” John admitted. “Or the taxi company’s. They’re programmed into my phone,” he protested when Sam began grinning.

“I thought you had an excellent memory. Except for tests, wasn’t it? And apparently phone numbers.”

“Irving gets a new phone every week, I change country every year. I don’t remember his number, I’m sorry. I do know what his taxi account number is.”

“Well, no problem,” Sam said. “This place must have a phone book, and we can just look up the number. What’s its name?”

“I don’t know. The taxi company?” John guessed. “The London taxi company? It probably has the words taxi and company in it somewhere. Stop looking at me like that. It’s never, ever, ever been relevant before.”

He paced over to the window, in case that helped him think, which it didn’t, and back to Sam. “It’s probably too late for him to have taken her to a restaurant. They might have gone to a bar, in which case we could just wait until he drops her off outside your hotel, which is- sorry, I didn’t ask.”

“The Savoy.”

“Well, that’s very convenient at least. We could easily walk there, and just... wait for Irving and Alice. Hm. Not ideal, but possible. The only problem is that Irving might already have dropped your sister off and gone home alone, at which point you would still be trapped outside and so would I.”

“We could take the subway back to yours,” Sam suggested.

“Ah. Yes,” John said, “we- sorry, what was that? _We?_ ”

“Have you got any money?”

“Not a penny, why? I gave it all to Irving on the way here.”

“So,” Sam said, “what you’re saying is you want me to pay with my twenty pounds to get you home, while I have to hang around outside my hotel waiting for your brother, which, as you even admit, is not ideal even if he does turn up, which he might not.”

“Unless you can think of something else,” John said nonplussed. “I will pay you back, I promise.”

Sam laughed in disbelief. “That’s not the point. I can sleep on the couch if you like.”

“I’m not taking you back to my mother’s house _at all._ ”

“Why not?”

“ _Because,_ ” John told him. “It’s completely inappropriate. She’s seventy eight.”

“Hey John,” one of the ushers said as she passed, “enjoy the show?”

“Fabulous,” John said, distracted, “beautiful, indescribable.”

“Ha. I’ll have to let the management know, they said you hated Strauss.” She grinned. “We’re going to shut up soon, if that’s all right.”

John nodded and he left the building with Sam slightly behind him.

Outside, he drew his cloak around him against the London air, which was even colder than it had been when he’d arrived. They walked past a busker playing a lively song on a mouth organ outside the London Transport Museum, his breath streaming through the instrument.

John leant against the cold wall of the station as Sam, still in the jacket he’d worn for the performance, fed his twenty into the ticket machine.

“Well, there you go,” Sam said, holding out the printed ticket.

“And another one,” John told him, managing to gesture back at the machine without taking his hands out from under his arms. “Don’t argue. And be quick about it. It’s freezing.”

“Thanks,” Sam said as they pushed through the barriers. John nodded. They rode the lift down in silence with a few other theatre-goers, and boarded a train heading for Ealing Broadway.

Eventually Sam said, “So you hate Strauss.”

“Yes,” John said. “Sorry. Nobody told you.”

“Why not?” Sam persisted, clearly still under the impression he hadn’t been rumbled. “You didn’t like tonight’s performance?”

“Not particularly.”

“But it was beautiful.”

“Superficially beautiful, perhaps,” John said, slouching down into his seat where it was hopefully warmer and more restful, “but there’s no depth of feeling. Richard has the problem you think you have- he has yet to be profound, and given that he died fifty years ago, it’s probably too late for him to start.”

“Der Rosenkavalier was a light comedy,” Sam protested. “What about Salome? Or, I know it’s kind of an obvious choice, but what about Befreit?” He hummed the opening bars of the song before John stopped him.

“No, no, no. You know what that does to me.”

Sam laughed though, it hadn’t exactly been a joke. “You don’t think that’s a profound reaction?”

“Come back when you’ve heard some Puccini,” John told him, “and we’ll talk.”

“Probably not for very long. I do know what that does to you.”

“So you admit you spent the last two days researching Strauss,” John said, ignoring the flush of arousal brought on by the pitch of Sam’s voice, which had suddenly dropped about half an octave.

“I admit nothing,” Sam told him.

“Butterfly’s famous aria,” John prompted, “goes something like-”

Sam laughed. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said, which made John laugh, too, companionably. The doors opened onto the first over ground platform, and he leant into Sam’s warmth, yawned and decided to stay where he was until they got out.

The house was a little way from the station, across the green and down some side roads.

“How good are you at running?” John asked Sam with a grin, and took off across the frosty grass.

Sam, who ran three times a week, was fast, but as he pointed out, laughing, he didn’t know where he was going. Tired as he was John reached his front door first, because Sam was half way down the street. Perhaps Irving was wrong or lying about the laptop, John thought as he let them in quietly. As unlikely as that seemed.

“We’re up here,” John said, foot on the stairs, as Sam began looking around for the sofa. “I think it will ultimately be less upsetting for my mother if she doesn’t just find you here. And Irving might still come back-”

“OK,” Sam said quietly, following him. “Have you got a guest room or-”

“I’m sleeping in it.”

“Ah,” Sam said. “So basically-”

“Irving’s old room is now a study slash laundry room.”

“So-“

“In here,” John said. Quietly, he opened the door to his room. Out of long-habit, the immediate metre of floor around the door was clear of debris. The rest of the carpet was covered with piles of clothes John had had to remove from his trunk to get to his opera gear, and the large blue trunk itself. The surfaces, including a chest-of-drawers, a bedside table and a desk John had insisted would be useful to other guests as well as himself, were heavily laden with books, and maps, and pens and pencils, and the five alarm clocks John had brought with him, his favoured electronic devices, including the new laptop, and-

“Wow,” Sam said stationery in the doorway as John pulled his pyjamas out from under a pile of shirts. “How long have you been here again?”

“I arrived about one in the afternoon and left around six. And for most of that time I was asleep. The plant was here when I arrived,” John added as an after thought as he headed to the bathroom where he changed his clothes and brushed his teeth.

There was a note on the mirror from his father pointing out that he’d gone to sleep and asking that Beethoven not be let out into the front garden. John left the note because it was funny and returned to his room. He found Sam still dressed and flicking through the part of ‘Guardian of Time’ with the words in it, which he’d managed to find underneath three volumes of conference publications on thermal imaging.

“Turn the lights off when you’re ready,” John told him. He dropped his clothes onto the desk chair and climbed into bed.

If Sam said anything after between this and the time John woke up in the morning to the gentle warmth of his body and the gentle sound of his snoring, it was entirely lost. Falling asleep almost on command wasn’t one of the skills John was most proud of, but it was arguably more useful than his ability to recite the first thousand digits of pi.

Sam was sleeping facing away from him. For a while John watched the way Sam’s back moved as he breathed. The curtains in this room were thin and even the weak December sun was getting them better of them. Then, after a while, he decided this was weird, and clambered over him.

In the bathroom he changed out of his pyjamas and into casual trousers, shirt and waistcoat. The note now read ‘Take Beethoven for a walk when you’re up’.

Leaving the note where it was, John returned to his room where Sam was apparently still unconscious. There was a slight tension to his exposed limbs that hadn’t been there earlier, but having slept for a reasonable amount of time himself John was more willing to be generous than he had been the day before. He moved his opera clothes from the chair to the floor, sat in the chair and opened the laptop. It made a series of loud noises before settling down, all of which Sam slept through. Every so often John looked up from his screen or his books to check on him, and it happened to be in one of these moments that his phone went off.

Sam’s eyes opened and then shut again as though it had been a terrible mistake. Perhaps he really had been asleep.

John closed the laptop, put the book he’d been using on top of it, and hoisted his jacket up from the floor. He pulled the ringing phone from his left hand pocket.

“Hello?”

“Hi John!” an insanely perky voice said. “It’s me-”

“Juliet, right. How are you?”

“Ugh,” she said, “bored. What’s up?”

“You’re bored already?”

“My aunt figured I’d be tired yesterday so we didn’t do anything, and she thought I’d still be tired today-”

“Has your aunt ever met you before?”

“I know, right?” she said loudly enough that Sam groaned from the bed. “Anyway,” Juliet said, “you’re the only person I know in London, and you did say to call-”

“I did,” John said getting up and moving over the bed. “You’re very lucky you got through, actually. I was convinced I’d lost my phone-”

“Your cell phone? No way.”

“Mm,” John said rubbing Sam’s uppermost arm. “Turns out I had it all along. Juliet, do you mind if I call you back?”

“Sure,” she said. “Why? Have you got someone there?”

“No.”

“Is it the writer?”

“I’ll tell you about it later.”

“OK. Tell him I said hi,” she said and hung up.

“Lucky it turned up,” Sam said with a weak smile as John dropped the phone next to him. “We could have used that last night.”

John grimaced. “You’re lucky I really like my new laptop.”

“What new laptop?” Sam asked.

“Irving saw you deliver it,” John pointed out, passing him his glasses as he sat up, “and I didn’t see or feel you take my phone, but I could have it dusted for fingerprints. The game is well and truly up.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “If I had taken it, I’m pretty sure I would have wiped any prints before putting it back.”

“I’d you had taken it,” John told him, “I’d be rather impressed. I usually have very good reflexes. I know I was tired last night, but- You don’t practise other sleight of hand tricks, do you?”

“You like that, huh?”

“Just - don’t do it again,” John said, feeling his mouth twitch into a smile that matched the one Sam was giving him. “Please.”

“OK,” Sam said. “No problem. Should I be going?”

“Yes,” John said. He would have liked to photograph Sam as he was now, tousled and triumphant at the success of his scheme, and mostly naked underneath the white sheets, but the camera was underneath something or other, so John stood aside so Sam could get up. “Yes, good idea. Not forever,” he said, busying himself with some of the debris on the top of the chest-of-drawers while Sam found his clothes, “but you should definitely leave now. Leave the country, if you can manage it. I don’t think I come across very well here. And the weather’s terrible.”

“You don’t want to see how I was going to get myself invited to Christmas dinner then.”

“No, what a horrible idea,” John said, turning away from the chest-of-drawers to look at him. Sam was tying his shoelaces and grinned at what could only be John’s incredulous expression.

“That was a joke,” Sam told him, standing up. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I think I’ll brick up the windows tonight anyway,” John said. “Cut all phone lines. Just in case. No offence.” He opened the door, checked the coast was clear, and hurried Sam down the stairs.

“Taking the dog for a walk,” he called, pulling his coat and a long, striped scarf from the hat stand. “Bates? Come on boy.” He opened the door. Sam slid out around it and the dog came charging out of the living room. John rubbed his head. “Good boy. Where’s your lead, eh? Go on, Beethoven, find your-”

“Your mother asks if you can pick up some butter while you’re out,” his father said, emerging from the living room with the lead, and John’s wallet and keys.

“And eggs,” his mother called from the kitchen.

“And eggs,” John’s father repeated.

“And anything you want to drink-”

“And-”

“Got it,” John told him. He opened the door wider and tucked his wallet into his pocket as Beethoven raced passed.

Sam was waiting at the end of the street.

“Thanks,” John said as he and Beethoven approached.

“It’s fine,” Sam said, “it’s not like I haven’t done it before. I admit, I’m kind of surprised you don’t just tell people-”

“What about?” John asked. He paused at a cash point, and passed the lead to Sam.

“You know-”

 _“Sam,”_ John said seriously, turning to look at him while the machine considered his PIN, “I helped you escape from my house entirely for your own good. My mother, who seems like a kindly old lady to the untrained eye, would I fear see you as a physical symbol of the country that has stolen her youngest son away from her.” He pulled his cash from the machine and took back the lead. “You would have been lucky to escape alive. Trust me.”

“So your mom knows you sleep with men.”

John laughed and let the lead play out before him. “No. At least, I haven’t told her.” He began to cut across the grass. “She may well have found out from another source. She’s a formidable lady, whose main goal in life, it seems, is to have her sons live within walking distance and maintain respectable homes, jobs and life-partners. Irving’s almost there, but I can’t seem to get started-”

“Your job’s not that disreputable,” Sam pointed out as they entered the station.

John quirked an eyebrow. “It is the way I do it.”

He bought Sam a single tube fare to Zone One, despite his objections and the credit card he’d had in his pocket all along, and saw him to the turnstiles.

“Again, it’s nothing personal. I just want to make sure you actually get on the train.”

“And go away, I get it.”

“I’d go with you if it wasn’t Christmas,” John told him. “Only partly because everything here makes me feel like I’m trapped in my own childhood.”

“Come with me anyway,” Sam said.

John laughed to pass that off as a joke, but he stopped when it became clear Sam was going to kiss him because that was inappropriate.

It was a very persuasive kiss – if John had been the sort of man to be swayed by that sort of thing, he might well have changed his mind. He didn’t, but it almost certainly would have helped Sam’s case if Beethoven hadn’t grown bored with whatever he’d found in the corner of the station, and come over to nose at the back of John’s knees. He pushed the dog’s head away and ignored its whining, but it was impossible to ignore one of his old school friends pushing through the underground barriers and clapping him on the shoulder.

“Theo! It’s Theo, isn’t it? I didn’t know you were back in town.”

 _“Excuse me,”_ Sam began, “but do you-”

“It’s all right,” John said. “Though, really, Drax, do you have any sense of personal space?”

Thomas Drax shrugged, and grinned cheerfully at Sam who seemed unable to comprehend him. “All right? Nice to meet you. Theo, you’re staying at your mum’s, right? That’s right down my way. I’ll walk with you.”

Beethoven, excited by the word ‘walk’, began to make for the exit.

“Just go,” Sam said as John made a token attempt to resist the social awkwardness and the pull of the dog on its lead. “Hey, and Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” John told him. “I’ll see you later. At Berkeley,” he added. “There’s rather a lot of sticky tape on my mother’s windows so don’t even think about trying to get in that way.”

“Curses, foiled again,” Sam said lightly, and pushed through the barriers into the station.

*

The porters greeted Sam by name as he pushed through the revolving doors of the Savoy. One of them asked how the opera had been.

“Strauss. Incredible,” Sam told- whatever his name was, “I loved every minute of it. Any messages for me?” he asked, leaning against the check-in desk.

“Your father rang at four this morning, sir,” the concierge said, handing over a folded slip of hotel message paper. “I’m afraid I took some liberties with the exact transcription-”

“That’s fine,” Sam said as he unfolded the note. As expected it read, _What are you doing in London? Please make your way to the chalet you, yourself reserved on my behalf three months ago. Do this as soon as possible, or face the consequences._ Sam shoved it in his pocket. “I imagine that was a bit more bracing in its original form.”

“Indeed, sir. And your editor faxed this through not ten minutes ago,” the concierge continued handing over a stack of paper as thick as a pound coin.

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Helen? OK. That’s funny, I wasn’t expecting-” He flicked the paper towards the final page where someone had scrawled their name and the words _officially by deed poll since 1975._

“I’m sorry, is there a problem?”

“No,” Sam said, trying to keep control of his mouth so that it didn’t spasm into the scary smile he was trying to avoid. “No, it’s-” He frowned hard, and tried a different tack. “My sister and I will probably be checking out today.”

“Very good. I had assumed as much from Mr Jones’s phone call. Would you like porters sent up to your rooms?”

“No,” Sam said, already walking back to the lift. “Thanks. No, it’s fine. We travel light.”

He took the lift up to the second floor, and knocked on Alice’s door.

“It’s open,” she called from the inside.

Sam pushed the door open and found his sister lounging in large chair, yesterday’s newspaper spread out in front of her. She frowned as she saw him.

“Oh. It’s only you. How disappointing.”

“Expecting someone? Irving Smith perhaps?”

“Room service,” she said, folding the paper with a sigh. “You’ll have to do, I suppose. Tell me everything, darling. How was it? How was he?”

“Everything will take a while, Ally-”

“Sum up, then. Précis. You can skip the sex.”

“There wasn’t any sex.”

“Any more sex,” Alice corrected.

“Any more sex,” Sam agreed. “The room was probably too big. For someone who claims to be claustrophobic, he certainly-”

“Skip it. The thought of sex nauseates me this early in the morning.”

“None between you and Irving, huh?”

“It’s not like I wanted it- oh, get that will you, Sam,” she said as someone knocked on the door, “but no, since you ask – not the slightest trace. He’s such a gentleman.” She smiled widely at the young man from room service. “And that’s very dull. Why couldn’t he be a jerk like his brother? It’s not like I’m going to stay here forever.”

“John’s not a jerk,” Sam said. He handed the bellboy the change from the twenty he’d paid for the tube tickets with, quickly before he got overly sentimental and had to keep it.

“I’m sure he isn’t,” Alice said, lifting the lid off her tray. “Although only because you say so, and I like you. All the evidence does point the other way. It’s lucky I hate skiing because otherwise I’d have to tell you this was a complete waste of time. Particularly if you didn’t eve-”

“Read this,” Sam said, pushing her breakfast bowl to one side so there was enough room for the pile of fax paper. “Oh, and I got a call from Dad this morning demanding our presence. You’ll be skiing again in no time, don’t worry.”

Alice groaned. “This is the worst Christmas ever,” she said, picking up the top sheet.

 _Dear Sam,_ the letter read,

_I’m writing this deceptively simple message on a miracle of modern technology. I don’t remember if I’ve thanked you for dressing up and bringing the laptop to me (n.b. has anyone ever told you that you’re completely insane?), but I suspect, given my knowledge of myself, that I haven’t. Allow me to take the opportunity to do so now. Thank you. It is one of the nicest presents I have ever received, and I hope you will understand that I can’t possibly give it back, even if you change your mind later. My parents do own a computer, but it’s in the study/laundry room along with the printer and the fax machine and Irving’s school trophies and a large amount of laundry. It would have been very uncomfortable and difficult to work in there, and I would undoubtedly have resorted to handwriting my notes at some point during the holiday, and I can’t read my handwriting._

_It’s slightly too early to work at the moment. My brain needs some time to warm up, and anyway I don’t like to work with other people in the room even if they’re unconscious (or pretending to be), so I thought I’d compile a list of thoughts I had about your novels. You seemed quite interested in them yesterday, but feel free to ignore this entire letter if you’ve thought better of it today._

_The Partial Truth - I’m not sure about this title. I can see what you were thinking, but I think you should have thought harder or asked someone else and changed it before releasing it on the world. I know it’s only your first book, but Guardian of Time is a definite improvement.  
P4 – What did your sister do to deserve this dedication? Did she do anything, or is it simply family loyalty and/or bribery?  
P6 – Good first line. Excellent first line. And I laughed aloud at the beginning of the third paragraph (Irving may have been overstating the matter, but it is a very funny book). I really like the way your sentences fit together. For example-_

This was followed by eight further densely populated pages, which Alice skipped, ending with

_-Tolkien could never have written that, and I’m sure he’d be the first to admit it. Undoubtedly in an envious tone.  
-Somebody seems to have stolen the dust jacket for this book, but I liked it excessively and took to carrying it around for a brief period of time. _

_Looking forward to seeing you again (in Berkeley) and reading 40,000 words of your next book._

_John (officially by deed poll since 1975)._

_P.S. Ignore any lies Irving may have told your sister about me, especially those that are corroborated by ‘independent’ sources._

“All right,” Alice said, handing the pages back, “I suppose you can keep him.”

“I was going to,” Sam told her.


	3. Long Distance Relationship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John is in England and Sam isn't.

Playing it cool was something other men did. Sam (who had more than his fair share of the American economy; charisma, intelligence, and arrogance to match) had never really seen the point of it. He didn’t speak to John at the hotel, because John didn’t pick up his cell, and the woman who answered the phone at John’s house when he called ten minutes later said John was either out or locked in the attic – she wasn’t sure which it was yet. There was some sort of loud banging up there, but that could be anything now John was home. 

Sam didn’t call from the taxi that came to take them to the airport because Alice’s cell phone had run down. However, he _did_ call from a pay phone in the airport, and then from a different pay phone in the airport. John’s cell still rang onto answer phone, and the woman who Sam now knew to be John’s mother told him that the banging had stopped, which made it slightly more likely John was out and the pipes were playing up. 

Ten minutes before boarding commenced Sam called again. He was about to hang up when the phone clunked into a connection and John’s voice finally said, “ _Sam_ ,” like Sam had just licked him somewhere really good. “ _Hello._ Sorry I missed your six other calls. I was in the attic trying to unblock the pipes. How are you? Back in America yet?” 

“I think you’re wrong about the conversations in chapter six of Guardian being pointless,” Sam told him. As usual when he talked to John he had to fight the strong urge to just say, _Marry me. Tomorrow. I’ll make it legal by then, don’t worry._ He pressed the phone against his ear with his shoulder and fed two more pound coins into the phone with one hand, waving Alice away with the other. “Kori doesn’t talk to Einer again before the end and they’ve got to have some sort of relationship before his death or there’s no point to it.” 

“If there’s no point to it, why did you kill him off?”

“No, what I’m saying is there is a point because they talked in chapter six about his fear of the dark, briefly, in that bit about his mother.”

“He could have been afraid of the dark and still alive. Lots of people are. I know some myself.”

“He had to die,” Sam persisted. “It’s a subtle echoing of the death of Baldur.” 

“Which one’s that?” There was a rustling of papers from John’s end. “I don’t remember him-”

“He’s a Norse god. He wasn’t in the book.”

“If he wasn’t even in the book, why am I supposed to care about his death?”

“You’re not supposed to. It just makes it more interesting if you know.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then you can read the book anyway.” 

“But you end up thinking a major character’s death was something that could easily have been averted.” 

“I don’t think that most people thought that.”

“I thought you wanted my opinion, not most people’s opinion. In my opinion, Einer’s death could have been averted, if someone had sat him down-”

“That’s not the point,” Sam said. He thought about it. “Well, no, OK, actually it is.”

“What is?” 

“That’s what makes tragedy tragic. That it didn’t have to happen.”

“But you just said it did.”

“No-”

“Because it was part of some myth I’d never heard of.”

“Right-”

“But now you’re saying it didn’t.” 

“I’m beginning to see why you have a problem with Strauss,” Sam said. He fed some more coins into the phone. “What I don’t understand is how you can enjoy any traditionally constructed narrative at all.” 

John laughed. “I may be pulling your leg. Slightly.”

“I figured.”

“Though I do think that you should have a better reason for killing people than because you want to emulate a myth half your readers won’t know about.” 

“There’s a note at the beginning suggesting some places you could go to find out more about the stuff I was working with.”

“I know. I saw it,” John said, and there was the warm crinkle to his voice that suggested he was smiling again. “I think I marked it down as patronising.” 

“You did.”

“Now I’m not so sure,” John said thoughtfully. “I’ve got another long flight back to America in just over a week, and I don’t think Irving is going to let me take Dracula with me. Which of the Eddas do you think I’d enjoy more?”

“Either?” Sam said, taken aback by the sudden change of conversation. 

“OK,” John said. “ _Either,_ ” he repeated carefully as though concentrating on writing it down.

There was a ping from somewhere in the ceiling, and a calm woman’s voice informed the departure lounge that the eighteen thirty two flight to Calgary, Canada, was beginning boarding. 

“Sorry. Let me try again,” Sam told the phone. “Both. Or maybe just bits of both,” he decided as Alice began to gather her possessions back into her hand luggage. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to just read them all the way through the first time. I usually make my students read the famous bits in first semester and then spring the rest of them in week six once they know what they’re getting into. Völuspá and Hávamál, that’s the vision of the Seeress, and the Speech of the High One, which has the great bit you might know about how Odin learned to cast runs. _I took up the runes, screaming, I took them - then I fell back._ ” There was silence from the other end of the phone, which was either a good sign or a sign that John had gone to do something else. “So yeah,” Sam said, hoping it was the first, “maybe you should start with those poems, and then skip to the Prose. Baldur’s death is part of the first book, or part, but kind of far back.” 

The announcement pinged through again. Alice drained her wine glass, caught Sam’s eye, and then looked pointedly at the departure board as though he might not have noticed it. 

“I put the specific reference in the appendix to Guardian,” Sam continued, turning his back on his sister as though that wasn’t going to be a mistake, “but I think it might be easier if I just make sure they send you the list I give my students when they send the books over.”

“I thought we talked about this,” John said. 

“I know you were making notes, but it’s important to get the right translation-”

“ _I don’t need you to buy me things,_ ” John said. There was a slight growl to his voice. “And I wasn’t making notes. I was drawing a picture of a squirrel.”

“So, you don’t like the laptop?” 

“There’s a library at the end of my road,” John told him, ignoring that one for the cheap shot it was. “I can go tomorrow. I don’t need-”

“But you wanted to read on the plane.” 

“Yes. I would make time, but-”

“What I’m saying is, it’s going to be as difficult and expensive to send whatever you borrow back from America as it would be for me to send stuff over now.” 

“Why would I send them back?” John asked apparently nonplussed. “I didn’t even send back The Horse Whisperer.”

“Well,” Sam said carefully, “I assume the library would want you to. So that other people can read them,” he continued in case it wasn’t a joke. 

“Well, yes, _eventually,_ ” John said.

“No, like in three or four weeks.”

“Did you tell them to insist on this?”

“What?”

“So I’d have to accept your offer?”

“You’re pulling my leg again.”

“I’m not.” 

“It’s something that all libraries do.” 

Alice’s gloved hand pushed its way past Sam’s shoulder and hovered menacingly just above disconnect bar. 

“All libraries,” Sam repeated, turning to glare at his sister’s impassive face, “and video shops, and, I don’t know, other places with the word ‘rental’ in the title.”

“Well, I never...” John murmured underneath the sound of Alice’s warning: 

“ _One minute._ ” She checked her wristwatch to watch the seconds as they went past. “And count yourself lucky.”

“What about ice skates? I’m supposed to be skating tonight with my best friend,” John said. “Will they want the skates back?”

“Forty seconds.”

“Yes,” Sam said to John. “OK,” he said as Alice made the universal hand twirl for _hurry up because your time’s running out_ , “I think I have to get on a plane now.”

“Go on then,” John said. “I think I can probably stand not to have my opinions on literature ridiculed for the next ten hours.” 

“I wasn’t ridiculing-”

“I’m sure you weren’t,” John said. “How were my other comments, out of interest?”

“Perfect,” Sam told him. 

“ _Really,_ ” John said in the tone of barely restrained smugness Sam thought he found sexiest of all. 

He smiled into the phone. “Exactly right, every one of them, even the ones where you told me I was shit. If you could somehow travel back in time five years and appear in my- _I still had ten seconds!_ ”

“My finger slipped,” Alice protested.

“Sure,” Sam said, cramming the phone back into place. 

“What? My finger slipped. I’m suffering a serious potassium deficiency. And I didn’t sleep well last night. That damn rose thing just kept repeating in my head.” 

“Need me to carry your bag?”

“You _are_ sweet,” Alice said, “but no. Also, obviously, you were about to embarrass yourself in a public place. And we have a plane to catch. Come on. Skiing!” 

Sam didn’t ring John again for another fourteen hours. In London it was 10am.

“What time do you call this?” John asked when he picked up the phone. His voice was light and friendly, amused and slightly concerned. “Five in the morning, isn’t it?”

“No idea,” Sam said, picking up the body of the pleasingly rotary dialled phone and carrying it as far as his door where the cord tightened to its full length. “Is it? It feels like it could be.” With the phone cord stubbornly refusing to go any further as things were, Sam yanked it away from the wall until it was long enough for him to shut the door and flop down on the bed. 

“Are you all right?”

“I slept on the plane,” Sam told him. “For about an hour.”

“Jet lag is a killer.” 

“So is black ice. Fortunately Ally only broke her leg.”

“Your sister broke her leg?” 

“Straight off the plane, not far from the nearest hospital, where I have been for the last five hours drinking shit coffee. I would have called you from there, but I didn’t know when you’d get up and then we had to come here.”

“That is spectacularly bad luck,” John said. “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have urged you to leave if I’d known Canada was so dangerous.” 

“Yeah,” Sam said, getting up to flick off the lights. “To be fair to Canada, I’m not saying she did it on purpose, but she was wearing really high shoes and sunglasses when she got off the plane. And on the plane we talked over the best way to stop dad killing us and the best way to get her out of skiing, and breaking a limb was at the top of both lists.” 

“Your entire family are utterly insane,” John said. “Notice that I’m not even considering the idea that you’re joking. Is she all right?”

“It worked,” Sam pointed out. “I just wish she’d told me we were going with that plan earlier so I could have called the ambulance in advance.” 

“My sister’s about to have a terrible accident.” 

“Exactly. And she’s fine now, by the way. Doped up to the eyeballs and sleeping. How was skating?”

“Not nearly so eventful. The friend I was going to meet and the friend I brought with me got on embarrassing well, and left me to fend for myself for most of the evening. It would have been incredibly boring if not for the lizard aliens who invaded the grounds of the National History Museum about half way through our allotted time on the ice. I think they must have mistaken it for Buckingham Palace-”

When Sam woke several hours later he found the uncomfortable object digging into his collarbone was the abandoned phone receiver. The dial tone buzzed soothingly down the line. 

Sam felt around at knee-level for the rest of the phone, and pulled it up to his chest. He reconnected the receiver and the body, and then, after the short period his brain took to process the idea, lifted the receiver back up to his ear and dialled John’s cell phone number slowly. 

Two rings, then John’s voice said: 

“You fell asleep on me.” 

“I have just discovered that,” Sam said. He ran his tongue over his teeth, which felt fuzzy and misused. “Sorry. In my defence, though, I was very tired.” 

“I know. That’s why I told you to hang up.”

“I know.”

“Repeatedly.”

“Yeah.”

“Fortunately, you didn’t miss anything very interesting.” 

“I don’t believe that.”

“I switched to civil service office gossip when I heard you were flagging.”

“I bet there was something in the telling that made it fascinating.” 

John laughed. “You are a terrible flirt.” 

“Terrible,” Sam said, “like, oh, Mr Jones, you are too wicked? Or terrible, like I need to get more practice?”

There was a loud hammering from the door. “Get up, Samuel!” Sam’s dad shouted from the other side. “I can hear you talking so don’t pretend to be asleep.”

“Either,” John said as heavy steps walked away. “No, wait, both. Incidentally, you’ll be pleased to learn that Irving’s leant me a copy of the Prose, so there’s no need to do whatever you were going to do.”

“Too late. I did it yesterday.” 

“In that case I’m about to hang up.”

“No problem. I need to go anyway,” Sam said. 

“Well, that makes the gesture rather pointless.” 

“Is it too early to say I like waking up with you?” 

“Thirty hours too late, surely,” John said. 

Sam let that one sink in and spread warmly through his body. 

“If it’s anything,” John said.

“Sorry.” 

“Now I have to go, too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” 

“OK.”

“I’ll be awake by six.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to excuse myself until about two my time at the earliest.” 

“Seven it is, then,” John said, and hung up leaving Sam with an inconvenient erection he had to get rid of before he could explain to his father where the fuck he’d been and what the fuck had happened to his sister’s leg. 

As it happened, he didn’t manage to get away until three. John answered almost immediately, sounding fresh and perfect and every one of the thousands of miles away that he was as he shouted over whatever awful weather they were having in England. 

“Hello!” 

“Hi,” Sam said, “sorry-”

“My fault,” John told him, “You said two at the earliest, and I should have said time was tight at my end. I would have missed you if it weren’t for the joys of mobile communication. I can’t really hear you, though.”

“I don’t think I’ve said anything.” 

“Good. I’ll call you back from the restaurant,” John said, and hung up. 

Sam waited another ten minutes. He stacked the pile of books he’d brought to read more neatly and went to brush his teeth. He came back. He re-stacked the books, considered a list of likely candidates John was meeting so early, and decided he might as well start getting undressed for bed since John hadn’t called back. 

He was mostly out of his jeans when the phone rang again. Sam caught it on the first ring. 

“Who are you meeting at eight in the morning?” he asked, using a hint of incredulity to mask the genuine question. 

“My best friend,” John said. “I haven’t seen her for a year, which is my fault, so I have to work around her schedule, and this is the only time she could do before Christmas. She’s not here yet, though, as far as I can tell. There must have been some disaster only she could deal with. There usually is.”

“Didn’t you go skating together, like, yesterday?” Sam asked, tugging his shirt off around the phone. 

“My other best friend.” 

“How many do you have?” 

“The right number,” John said. “How many do you have?” 

“None. At the moment,” Sam said. “I’ve had,” he paused slightly, as though he needed to count, “seven, but never at the same time.”

“Oh dear.”

“I have _friends,_ ” Sam told him. “Some of whom I like more than others, but-”

“ _Fred!_ ” John shouted, slightly away from the phone so it was only mildly deafening. Sam grimaced as John yelled, “ _Over here!_ Sorry. She’s here,” he said at a more normal volume. “I think I have to go, but I am very interested in your friend ranking system. Tell me about it later.” 

“Your best friend,” Sam said, “that you’re here to meet was busy with- running the country, right?”

“According to Irving, he does most of it,” John said, as though this was nothing, really. “Hello darling,” he said to the woman he’d come to meet. The phone was still relatively close to his mouth, in his hand as he hugged her, and Sam could hear the kiss he pressed into the side of Winifred Bambera’s face, and her rather acidic opening remark: 

“I thought the point of meeting you here was that people wouldn’t know I was here and wouldn’t bother me.”

“John,” Sam said. 

“Nobody will bother you,” John assured her. “And if they do, they’ll have to deal with me. Lovely to see you again, by the way. Or at least it would be if you stopped glaring at me like that.” 

“Sorry. I’ve had a terrible-” The Prime Minister’s voice faded away as, presumably, they moved apart to sit at opposite sides of the table. 

“ _John?_ ” Sam said again. 

“Sam,” John said. “Hello again. I forgot you were still on the line.” 

The horrible tight feeling in Sam’s chest became, if possible, tighter and more horrible. 

“Is the phone going to be with us all breakfast?” Fred Bambera asked, her voice loud enough to be heard down the phone.

“Fred’s here,” John explained to Sam unnecessarily. “So, I should go. Sorry.” 

“Actually, can I have a word?” Sam asked him.

“With her?”

“Yes, please.” 

“No,” John said, laughing. “Why?” 

“Big fan,” Sam said, trying to work out the best damage control strategy as he spoke. “No, really. I love her work. Education, education-”

“I don’t mind talking to your latest,” Bambera said. “Go on. Hand it over.” There was an audible sight of frustration from John, and her voice became louder. “After the last year, there must be at least five I’ve missed out on. I’m beginning to feel like a terrible friend. Hello?” she said directly into the phone. 

“Hi,” Sam said, “Ma’am. _Listen-_ ”

“I haven’t seen John for over a year,” Bambera said, “so I’m sure you’ll understand what I’m about to do.” 

And she hung up. 

Sam put the receiver back carefully back on the phone base. 

“Fuck,” he said loudly to his empty room. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck._ ”

“ _Sam,_ ” Alice shouted from the next room. “ _Shut up. I’m sleeping._ ”

“Fuck,” Sam said again, more quietly. “Shit. Fuck.”

Winifred Bambera was currently the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Some time before that she had been one of John Smith’s laboratory assistants at Cambridge: a relationship that had (according to Sam’s sources) been entirely professional, while they both worked there. The problem was that they had apparently gotten on so well that he’d taken her with him when he went on a round-the-world trip during the summer break. At some point during the three months that followed, the relationship had ceased to be professional. At some point, they had (according to Sam’s sources) been married for four days. Then Bambera had “come to her senses” and broken up with him. She’d stayed in Peru when he returned to Cambridge, and, when she did eventually return home, John had put her in contact with his brother, who had (in John’s absence) helped her ascend through the ranks of the Labour party. 

Out of all John’s many “best friends” (and Sam had a list of them somewhere), there was no worse candidate to be having breakfast with John while Sam was in fucking Canada in his underwear. 

He considered calling John back and issuing some sort of ultimatum, but he wasn’t sure if he could bear hearing John laugh at how ridiculous that was. He considered calling one of the local rags, or several of them – the kind of papers who would be happy to snap some pictures of the PM out for breakfast with her ex-husband. It was tempting, but it also seemed like the sort of thing that might drive people together, and if nothing else Sam felt too wretched and tired to pursue the scheme. He considered going to sleep and forgetting about it. Instead he got up, pulled some pants on, and wandered back out into the dining room where several bottles of wine were still out on the sideboard. 

The phone woke him about two hours later. Sam pushed himself out of the chair he’d fallen asleep in as it rang for the third or possibly fourth time. His head felt like crap and he almost stepped on the wine glass he’d left at the base of the chair. 

“Who the fuck is calling this early?” his father yelled from somewhere upstairs. “Where’s that phone? I’ll fucking kill them.” 

The phone gave another ring and then stopped. 

Sam listened for the sound of his father verbally destroying the caller, and, when it didn’t come, he sank down onto another couch. Whoever it was (John or not) had hung up. He could go back to sleep, and call John in another three hours. 

But with there was a murmuring from Alice’s room, breaking through the fog in his ears. A large part of Sam’s brain urged him just to go back to sleep, but a larger part pointed out that he didn’t know anyone who would call at five in the morning except an Englishman in England who didn’t know it was (in some cases, quite literally) suicide to call the Jones household before 8am. 

He got up, and stepped on a different wine glass. He swore quietly and brushed the glass off his socks. Fortunately he’d either been lucky or was still too drunk to feel the pain yet. 

He knocked on Alice’s door and let himself in. 

Alice craned her neck around to peer at him. “Wow,” she said. “You look awful.”

Sam gestured at the phone she had cupped to her ear. “Is that John?”

“No, really. You do,” Alice told him. 

“It is him, isn’t it? Give me the phone,” Sam said, gesturing at the receiver. “How come you even have a phone in your room?”

“If you want the best room next time, you break your leg,” Alice told him. 

“I probably have glass in my foot,” Sam told her. 

Alice glanced down over the edge of the bed, and wordlessly handed the phone over to him. 

“I understand I’ve caused something of a rumpus,” John’s voice said, and the sound of it seemed to flow through Sam like aspirin. 

“My dad believes in staying up till two and sleeping six hours,” Sam told him, sitting down next to Alice’s cast on the bed. “Every day. No matter the time zone.”

“So I hear. I imagine that’s how he built his empire.” 

“Probably,” Sam said. He rubbed his eyes. What’s up? Why are you calling so early?” 

He’d expected John to prevaricate or deny there was any reason at all besides boredom and a failure to remember which time zone he was in. 

“There haven’t been five of you in the last year,” John told him. “Fred shouldn’t have said that, because it’s not true and it’s also very rude.”

“Right,” Sam said. Alice gave his arm a sleepy a pat. 

“There was only one,” John said. “That is – one relationship, and it ended in January.” 

“I know,” Sam said. “Tamsin Drew. Left you January fifth last year because, and I quote, “it’s like you don’t have any real feelings.””

“Mm. We haven’t talked about how I feel about you spying on me,” John said. 

“You feel flattered,” Sam told him. “And scared, obviously, but at least you know it’s me, and that there’s nothing really bad I’m going to do with the information. And kind of worried that there’s something I’ll find out that you’ve forgotten you don’t want me to know. And relieved, because it means I’m going to understand everything you say without you having to explain the context. And–”

“OK,” John said gently.

“Right?”

“More right than Tamsin, certainly,” John said. “And she’s known me for three years, now.”

“Marry me,” Sam said, because he was too drunk not to.

John laughed. “Maybe later,” he said, and hung up. 

“You are so _smooth,_ ” Alice muttered into her pillow. 

“Yeah. Shut up,” Sam said, and stumbled back to his own room.

He woke up in an almost post-coital haze of happiness and satisfaction, despite the thumping headache and the twisting of his stomach.

“How are you feeling?” John asked down the phone, having answered on only the second ring. 

“God awful,” Sam told him. He had the phone hooked under his ear so he could tap a large number of actual aspirins out onto his bedside table. “How’re you? What are you doing?”

“At the moment, I’m talking to you.” 

“OK. Before that.”

“Ah, I see. Before that I was reading a very long, very dull book about particle wave structures.”

“Useful?”

“Potentially. And before _that_ I went for a walk with my father and before that... before that I was forced to do the washing up, which was after lunch, which I had after I spoke to Juliet,” he said, getting into his stride now, “about what we should do later today without reaching any real conclusion, and after I turned down Drax’s offer of a Christmas day kick-about but agreed to go to the pub– sorry, let me make a note of that. _Pub later. Tell Juliet._ And before _that_ \- I was talking to you again. Do you want me to go back further?”

“No, it’s OK. I remember that part.”

“That’s very good to know,” John said. “I would have been very disappointed if you didn’t.” He paused slightly. “And what about you?”

“What am I doing, or what have I been doing?” 

“You can go forward in time if you want.” 

“What will I be doing?”

“Mm.”

“Thinking about touching you,” Sam told him. “I’ll probably get some skiing in there somewhere, and some eating, drinking, reading, and talking to my family, but that’ll be the main item on the agenda. That’s also what I am doing, and what I was doing before you asked.”

“Thinking about touching me.”

“And before that I was asleep.”

“Where?” John said. It was difficult to read much into a single word, but the slight thickening of his voice around the syllable assured Sam that John wasn’t asking about where he’d slept.

He lowered his voice to the same murmur John was using. “At the moment? Just underneath your jaw. The skin there is probably slightly rough at this time of the day, for you, but it’s softer lower down and if I slide my hand lower I’ll have my fingertips on your pulse and I can feel your neck moving as you talk. Which is pretty amazing and distracting, and I’ll probably switch to licking you quite soon and trying to undo your shirt-”

“Taking liberties,” John murmured. “If you just asked, I’m sure I’d help you. Unless my hands were busy elsewhere, of course.” 

“I don’t need any help,” Sam assured him. 

“That’s very good news,” John said, “because recently I’ve been thinking about your incredible-”

“I see no one’s remembered I have a phone in my room,” Alice’s voice said cheerfully down the line. 

“I’ll get a cell phone,” Sam told John, who was laughing quietly, and hung up.

He called John as soon as the cell was fully charged, then late in the evening just after John had woken up, and early the new morning after he’d slept a full night for the first time in four days. A few hours later John called while Sam was fortunately in a ski lodge to tell him that something-Sam-eventually-realised-was-related-to-the-machine-he’d-been-working-on-during the-Christmas-party was working properly at last. He called several more times at less convenient times, as did a number Sam didn’t recognise, and when Sam eventually rang back him from the chalet, John told him it had been nothing. Apparently Irving had pointed out how excruciatingly expensive transcontinental cell phone calls were, but steps had now been taken to remedy the matter – which Sam understood meant that John had borrowed his brother’s phone and would be using it until the British government shut it down. 

He spoke to John five times on Christmas Eve, twice on Christmas day, and they almost had sex over the phone in the early hours of the twenty-sixth before John’s mother knocked to ask whether he wanted a cup of tea. Over the next week, Sam attempted to re-introduce the idea of sex into their conversations, but John had decided it was weird and inappropriate to do anything his parents might overhear and refused to go to a hotel, despite Sam’s offer to pay.

“I’ll be back in the country in two days,” he pointed out the last time Sam tried to broach the subject. “And I will make it up to you, I promise.” 

“Really.”

“Repeatedly, I imagine.”

“Interesting. Repeatedly how?” 

“ _Stop it._ ”

“You’re doing the stern voice on purpose.”

“You’ll find that difficult to prove.”

“You are evil,” Sam told him. “If I was a man of stronger character I’ll tell you to go fuck yourself.”

“I think you already did, and I refused.”

“ _Evil,_ ” Sam repeated. “When are you back in America again?”

“Two days,” John said, amused. “When are you back?”

“Tonight. I leave in six hours.” 

“Do you want to pick me up from the airport?”

“Do you want me to pick you up from the airport?”

“Yes.”

“OK, then,” Sam said grinning - two weeks not having dulled the rush of relief and pleasure he felt every time John confirmed his interest in their relationship. “I guess I’ll see you then, then.”

As it happened, though, he didn’t. There was a message from John on his cell phone answering machine when he got off the plane. 

“Hello, it’s me. Don’t meet me at the airport. Something’s come up- I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough. Well, a lot of a breakthrough, and I won’t be there. I’ll explain later. Ring me in about.... twenty hours. I assume you have my American mobile number, but if not Mary should have it. I’ll speak to you soon.”

Sam listened to the message twice more because he hadn’t heard John say anything new for several hours, tried calling him in England anyway and, when there was no answer, went to get his suitcase and his car. 

For someone who had only previously had to endure stretches of eight hours, maximum, without speaking to John, twenty hours didn’t seem soon at all. Sam drove home. He petted his cats, put on _Madam Butterfly_ , showered, and opened the large box that had arrived from his PI. Some of the biographical stuff was irrelevant now – he’d either found it out himself or John had told him some time during the previous fortnight – but there were a few old tapes of John’s lectures that were new to him, Xeroxes or copies of his complete bibliography, a list of places divined from his credit card bill that he’d visited in the last two months, some footage of him with Bambera at some charity event, and lots of photographs. 

Sam took off _Madam Butterfly_ and let John’s voice fill the house. The first tape had been recorded almost ten years ago and there was a subtle but noticeable difference in the cadence of John’s voice and his verbal tics. Sam listened to the three later tapes and heard John growing older, even as John must have read his books and seen him maturing as a writer. 

At the end of the tapes, he got up from where he’d been sitting for the last four hours, and went up to bed. There he put the first tape back into a different cassette player, turned the volume down, and fell asleep to the sound of John explaining something impossibly complicated as though it was something he’d been familiar with since birth. 

The next day there were a far more manageable number of hours before he could speak to John again. Sam went for a run and figured out roughly how he was going to open all of his Monday morning lectures. He went home, showered, and accidentally read forty pages of _The Silmarillion_. Charlie came round about eleven, having forgotten that Sam would be back, and, although he really didn’t want to, Sam took him out to brunch to thank him for mostly remembering to feed the cats. He made the mistake of mentioning John more than once, which started Charlie on a series of innuendoes that reminded Sam why he usually avoided other gay men, particularly the ones he was supposedly friends with. 

His plan to satisfy Charlie with minimal details worked even less well than he’d anticipated. After being told Sam’s John was English and a physics professor, Charlie relaxed back into his chair. 

“Oh. _That_ John.” 

“You don’t know him,” Sam told him. 

“Oh, don’t I?”

“No, you don’t. He’s only been here three months.” 

“I know. Demon poker player? Lives above the laundrette? Sexiest voice on the Continent? It’s the same one – I told you about him before Christmas. Really, you have my congratulations. He is _hot._ ”

“ _Jesus,_ ” Sam said. “You haven’t slept with him, have you?” 

“Not yet,” Charlie said, and waggled his eyebrows. 

“Oh, come on!” he protested as Sam pushed back his chair and left the restaurant. “It was a joke! _Sam? You said you’d pay!_ ” 

Exactly twenty hours after the time stamp on John’s message, Sam called the top number from the business card he’d taken from John at the opera house. 

“Hello,” John’s voice said as soon as the call connected, “this is John. I’m not answering my phone for some reason. I don’t know why at the moment. You can leave a message if you like, but I probably won’t listen to it. Not soon, anyway, and you probably want an answer before that. Try calling me at home or on a different number, or, if your message is really urgent, it might be worth trying to find me. I’m afraid I can’t give you any help, as I could be anywhere, but hopefully you have a slightly better idea.”

Sam waited half an hour and called again. Then he called Mary. 

“Has John got a new cell phone since Christmas?” 

“How should I know?” she said. “While we’re on the subject, how did you get my number? I would have remembered-” 

Sam hung up on her, and called John again at home and then on his mobile. Both numbers resulted in unhelpful messages from John advising any caller not to bother leaving a message. Sam took the advice offered by the first message and went out looking for him. The university campus was still closed for winter break, but Sam wandered round the outside of the Physics department to see if there was any light inside. There wasn’t, so he drove across the bridge to John’s apartment where the unsavoury looking characters in the laundrette told him they hadn’t seen the Professor for over a month. Then he began working systematically through the list from John’s credit card, and finally he called both Mary and Charlie again to see whether they had any ideas he hadn’t considered. 

By the time he returned home it was past midnight. The light on his answering machine was flashing, but the message turned out to be from Charlie, who said he’d been thinking and it was just possible John was out a restaurant Sam had checked about two hours ago. 

It was a nice, reasonable time back in England, so Sam called John’s mother, who told him her youngest son had left two days earlier. 

“And he left for San Francisco?” Sam asked just to cover all possible bases.

“That is where he teaches, so I expect he must have done.” 

“So there’s no possibility he might have gone somewhere else?” 

“If Theo doesn’t want to be found, you’re not going to find him.”

“Does that mean you think he could have gone somewhere else?” Sam pressed, despite the unfriendly tone that had started to creep into the voice on the other end of the line.

“Very possibly. Now, I’m afraid I am going to have to go. Goodbye.”

Irving Smith was more helpful.

“Ah, hello Mr Jones. How delightful to hear from you again. Yes, he’s gone to New York. I’m afraid I don’t know for how long or how to reach him.” 

“Do you know why he went?” 

“Something to do with his latest gizmo, I believe. Does that help?”

“Not really, no.”

“No, I didn’t think it would, but there we are. That is all I know. If you do find him, tell him to post the Dracula back in at least three jiffy bags. And, should you need to call again, would you mind using the other line? This one is supposed to be for the Defence Minister.” 

Even though it wasn’t at all a reasonable time in San Francisco, Sam called the PI he’d had investigate John. 

“No one,” the man muttered, once he understood what was going on. “I can consult my records, but they’re going to say the same thing as their illustrious progenitor.” There was a shuffling of paper. “No. He doesn’t know anyone in New York. He’s never been, no one from the Berkeley faculty that he’s friendly with comes from the state, and none of his previous acquaintances-”

“Not good enough,” Sam told him. “Contact any centres of higher education, and anyone with access to high-powered imaging technology, as well as anyone who knows someone John knows. If you still don’t know where he is in two days time, go to New York. I’ll pay your expenses.”

“How long has the gentleman been missing?”

“He could have been gone as much as thirty five hours.”

A whistle. “As much as that?”

“Just find him,” Sam said and hung up. 

He called John again, just to be sure, but there was no reply beyond the cheerful message from John about how he didn’t know where he was. 

_Probably just overreacting,_ Sam told himself firmly, knowing he was overreacting. 

But, as the days passed and became a week in which John still hadn’t reappeared, his panic began to seem more reasonable. By that time winter semester had started without John. At some point before Sam arrived on campus, someone, probably a well-meaning TA, had listened to the departmental messages left during the vacation, made a note of them, and erased the tape. Sam found a post-it stuck to his desk that read, “Call from ‘John’. In New York. Back soon”. Fortunately, for whoever had left such a worthless message, the handwriting wasn’t immediately familiar, which meant Sam would have to dedicate time and attention he didn’t have to destroying the note writer. He stuck his own post-it on the phone pointing out that, as Head of Department, he could easily fire anyone who deleted any more messages and left it at that. 

Once again, the Physics department were spectacularly unhelpful. None of the professors had seen John, nor did they want to. Sam tracked down John’s TAs, and found that one of them had received a phone call at five in the morning, in which John had apparently asked for a machine somewhere to be switched on, and then realised how early it was, apologised, and hung up. 

Sam called the Chancellor and explained how ridiculously ill John was. When this didn’t fly, he pointed out that special dispensation could be given in exceptional circumstances and that the library was looking a bit dilapidated. This gained John another week, which Sam considered very good value, given what had happened. 

John’s absence made Sam difficult, and less inclined to tolerate stupidity or slowness from others. Six people left his classes in the first three days – which wasn’t a record, but was still pretty good going. 

On the fourth day of term, just as Sam was in the middle of berating some idiot for having the temerity to show up for one of his lectures without finishing the reading list, one of John’s TAs showed up at the back of the class. 

Sam threw his own copy of _The Saga of the Volsungs_ towards the unfortunate student, and strode up to meet Martin, the nervous looking TA. 

_“Well?”_

“Professor Smith wants to see you. If it’s convenient. He said – you know, if it was convenient-”

“ _Class dismissed,_ ” Sam bellowed. “Come an hour early next week. And make sure you’ve read everything I asked you to read this time.” He let the door bang shut behind him. “How long has he been back?” 

“He hasn’t – I mean, he’s not back. Well, not exactly.”

“What do you mean, _not exactly?_ He either is back or isn’t. Which is it?”

“Not back,” Martin said. “But he’s created this really cool communication device. It’s really cool. It’s like a hologram, but like Star Wars holograms, rather than the disappointing holograms most of us get to play around with. It’s really cool,” Martin said again, not, Sam thought, because he believed his listener hadn’t grasped this fact, but because he was so impressed he couldn’t help himself. 

They reached the hall John was supposed to be lecturing in, and Sam waved Martin away and took a seat in the back row. John, or a three-dimensional image of John, was at the front of the room, explaining exactly how brilliant he was to several twenty year olds. The colours of him were strangely inverted, like a photographic negative. As Martin had tried to explain before Sam had been able to convey the extent to which he’d talked to John about this project, this was because the image of him was being generated from his heat signature, rather than any visual stimulus. 

Sam’s plan had been to wait until all the students dispersed at the end of the lecture before he confronted John, but he’d hardly been seated for more than two minutes before John spotted him, beamed and shouted his name in a way that made Sam feel ridiculous. _Bastard,_ Sam thought, as his fucking heart skipped a beat that John didn’t deserve. 

“Class, this is Sam Jones,” John said. “Sam – my favourite class.”

There was some distinct muttering at the mention of Sam’s name that made John smile and wave them down. 

“Yes, yes, none of that. Sam, would you mind coming down here? I can’t really see you.”

Sam smiled thinly. “I’ll wait until the class is over.”

“It is over,” John said. “I assume everyone’s had enough learning for today?” he asked as the students began returning to their bags and books. He raised his voice as they tailed out, with waves, chattering amongst themselves, and covert glances at Sam. “I’ll be back in person on Monday by the latest, so drop round whenever you like from then onwards. Don’t let them force you into betting actual money next time, though, all right? These men are addicts. They’ll play for matchsticks or they’ll fleece you for everything you’ve got. Remember that!” 

Eventually the door closed behind the last person and they were alone in the lecture hall – or rather Sam was alone while John was somewhere on the other side of the country. 

“It’s lovely to see you again,” John said, smiling, and then busying himself with something at keyboard level. “Part of you anyway. The range isn’t very good at my end. I can only see what the security cameras in the lecture hall can see. You’re mostly in a blind spot. I can move the cameras, of course,” he said, and the cameras in the room all twisted obligingly, “but I don’t like to do that, because it worries security and they spend ages recalibrating the frequency, which is a waste of everyone’s time. And, this isn’t that much better. Now I can see slightly more of your shoulder than before- If you came and sat slightly closer to the front-”

“I’m fine,” Sam said. “Thanks.”

John’s image looked up at him, though presumably he was actually just looking up at the camera footage. “Are you angry with me?”

“Yes,” Sam told him pleasantly. 

“Why? Because I didn’t call you?”

“Partly,” Sam agreed. 

“ _Partly,_ ” John repeated, as though mulling this over. Having apparently come to a decision, he explained, “I was about to leave England when I had my breakthrough. That would mean I’d be back where the device was, which would mean I couldn’t test it properly as I’d be right next to it, rather than a considerable distance. The point was for it to weed out all the extraneous data and focus on me. Now obviously I could just have stayed in England for another week, but that would have unfortunately involved staying in England for another week. So I accepted my friend Juliet’s kind invitation to stay with her at her parents’ house in New York. I switched to a New York flight at the airport, which was my big mistake. They sent me to New York and my trunk went to San Francisco as originally intended. My trunk containing my American mobile, the charger of my UK mobile, all my clothes- you can’t tell, I assume, but I’ve had to borrow everything I’m wearing.”

“How dreadful for you.”

“I know you’re joking,” John said, “but, in fact, it hasn’t been easy, not having anything I didn’t carry on the plane with me for the last two weeks – my phones not least amongst those possessions. I tried to call you, obviously, but you’re a difficult man to track down. No contact numbers on the university system, you’re not in the San Francisco phonebook, and directory assistance have several Sam Jones’s in the area, most of whom were charming. I did leave a message at the English department-”

“Which only proves you did have Berkeley’s number.”

“You’re angry because I didn’t call the _university?_ ”

“If you’re planning to be a whole week late, then, yeah, it’s a good idea to tell your employers so they don’t fire you.”

John made a face. “Nobody has ever fired me.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Sam told him. 

“You’ve met me,” John said. “Look at me. I don’t get fired. Sam, please, don’t worry. I’ll handle it, talk them round-”

“I’ve already paid them off,” Sam said, “that’s not the point.”

“What do you mean, you’ve paid them off?”

“Four days late,” Sam said, “and no explanation. What did you expect me to do? You’re OK for now, but you need to get you ass back here now and do some serious fucking grovelling to me and the Chancellor. Monday’s not good enough. Get on a plane tonight.”

“ _Hm,_ ” John said, frowning, “ _I see._ Well, thank you for your time. You’ve answered my question before I answered it.”

“What question?” Sam said. 

“I’ll see you on Monday,” John said. “Tuesday- at the latest.”

“I can book the flight for you. It’ll be ready to leave in an hour or two.”

“Thank you,” John said, “but that won’t be necessary. I’m not flying. I don’t want to, for one thing, and for another I have a lot of sensitive equipment that I’ve been working on for the last two weeks and I don’t want to entrust any of it to the sort of people who would happily send me to New York and everything I own to San Francisco. If you aren’t willing to drive me, I suppose I’ll have to hitchhike.” 

“You want to drive across the entire country?” 

“No,” John said. “I don’t have a licence. I _had_ hoped-”

“Do you have any _idea_ how far it is from New York to San Francisco?”

“Almost exactly, as it happens. Two thousand, nine hundred and six, I think. That was the point. I needed a reasonable distance, otherwise I would just have gone to Santa Rosa.”

“You’re not hitchhitching across the entire country.”

“That’s funny,” John said, “I thought I was. Unless you’re planning to pay every person on the freeway to turn me away. You know, this entire conversation is making me think my first instincts were right, after all. Who do you think you are?”

“I’ll come and get you,” Sam told him. He got to his feet, and climbed down a few steps. “Please. I’ll come and get you. Just stay where you are. Wherever it is. I can probably be there some time later tonight.”

John nodded. “Martin has Juliet’s address,” he said, and pressed a button that made his image disappear. 

The Sam who had entered the lecture hall had thought it impossible to be more angry with someone and still want them to be alive. The Sam who left it realised that worry had been clouding his judgement earlier. 

He called a hire car firm, booked a flight, made sure decent people were covering his classes the two days he expected to be driving across the fucking country, booked several hotel rooms along the prospective route, called Charlie, apologised, and made him promise to feed the cats again, and flew out to New York. 

He was still angry when he arrived seven hours later. It was dark, and Sam had to keep stopping and turning on the overhead light in order to see the map he’d brought. Eventually he pulled up in front of some tiny house in the middle of nowhere and got out. 

A tiny blonde girl opened the door. “Hi. Come in. _John? Get out here!_ You’re Sam, right?” she said, as she led him down the hallway. “Probably should have asked that a bit earlier- Please don’t be a murderer.”

“I’m Sam,” Sam told her. “And I haven’t murdered anyone. Yet.”

“John’s really, really sorry about not calling you,” she said quickly. “I know he didn’t say it, but he is totally sorry. And for making you drive across the country.” 

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I’m sure.” 

“He deserves to live,” she said. “Mostly.” 

Sam grinned slightly, which was presumably reassuring because she grinned back. There was a bit of an awkward silence, and then she said, 

“I read your books.” 

“Really. What did you think?” 

She shrugged. 

“That good, huh?” Sam said. “Listen, I can wait outside-“

“ _John?”_ she yelled. “Sam’s here!”

“I heard the absurdly expensive car pull up outside,” John said, emerging from one of the doors off the hall, carrying a large box. He was wearing jeans and a bright blue hooded sweatshirt that advertised a college football team. 

Sam’s mouth crept into a smirk and John scowled. “This is _borrowed,_ ” he pointed out unnecessarily.

“Whatever,” Sam told him. “Do you need me to carry anything out to the car?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Fine by me.”

“Wow,” Juliet said, “this is uncomfortable.” She paused. “Well - have a nice trip, boys! My mom wants her house back.”

She followed them out to the car. John put the box he was carrying into the trunk and then went back inside for another one. Sam decided to avoid the awkward goodbye stage and got into the front. He checked the map again as John went back for another three boxes and eventually slammed the trunk closed. 

Through the closed windows he heard John say, 

“Thank you for putting me up - and putting up with me.” 

“No problem. Any time,” Juliet said. “By which I mean, never again.” 

There was some sort of hug, and then John accidentally opened the driver’s door, closed it again, and got in at the right side. 

Once they were out of sight of the house, Sam put on the first CD. 

“You’re doing this on purpose,” John said, as the overture started. 

“Don’t tell me you hate the Ring Cycle?”

John muttered something indistinct but bitter, and Sam grinned. “Don’t worry. Only another fifteen CDs to go, then we can put on something else.” 

They only got through three before John fell asleep against the window. Sam turned the volume down, but continued the Cycle because translating the German was keeping his brain awake. He let himself look at John every so often, and began to forgive him a little. 

John woke while Sam was out getting coffee and gas. Sam found him in the driver’s seat, fiddling with the CD player. He tapped on the window and John rolled it down. 

“I can drive for a bit,” he offered. “Particularly if I get to choose the music.”

Sam nodded. “Take this then,” he said, offering John the coffee through the window. 

John took it and peered through the small hole in the top dubiously. “Is there - milk? Sugar?”

“No, and no.”

“I’ll just rectify that, then,” John said, opening the door so that Sam had to step back. 

“Hang on a minute,” he said, pulling open the back door as John began to walk away. “You might as well take this, too, if you’re going.” 

“A fortune in unmarked bills?” John asked as the black sports bag dropped at his feet.

“Yeah,” Sam said, settling into the back of the car. “I want you to de-rob the gas station.” 

He dozed for several hours until it became impossible to ignore the glare of the sun. 

“Is that the sound of you waking up?” John asked from the front. 

“Unfortunately.” Sam sat up and leaned forward. His finger brushed the shoulder of the cashmere sweater John was wearing. “Do you need a break?” 

“I had one,” John said, “about an hour ago when I stopped to get breakfast. Now I’d be happy not drive again for the rest of the trip.”

“OK,” Sam said. He pointed towards the horizon. “Pull over there, and we’ll swap out.” 

“You didn’t bring anything that wasn’t Wagner,” John said, as they crossed each other in front of the car. 

“I _like_ Wagner.”

“Of course, you do,” John said, closing the passenger door behind him. 

Sam started the engine again. “I’m a Norse scholar. What do you think people get me for my birthday? Plastic Viking helmets, and endless recordings of the Ring Cycle.” 

“It sounds dreadful.”

“Wagner, or my birthdays?”

“Either,” John said. He opened a large volume of journals and frowned down at it until he found his page. “Both,” he said, and grinned when Sam glanced over at him.

The rest of the day passed without incident. John read, with three other books propped up against the dashboard, and a spiral-bound pad on top of whatever he was currently taking notes from. After a while, Sam found that driving in a straight line worked for him in much the same way running did. The simple action was enough of a distraction that he didn’t find something else to do, and boring enough that he could phase it out and just concentrate on putting together a plot line. He’d been too agitated for the last week and a half to think properly, but now here was John – working, relatively companionably, in the same car. Things were almost certainly going to be all right. 

He’d worked out exactly how the next three chapters of his book were going to go by the time they pulled in at the hotel he’d booked in Salt Lake City. As it had gotten darker, John had made a very unconvincing offer of taking over so Sam could sleep in the back again, but at that point Sam had been quite happy to get out of the car, write for a bit and then sleep in an actual bed. They’d made good time so far, and it looked like they’d be back before Monday. Besides, he’d already booked the rooms – two of them, at either end of the third floor corridor. 

John made no comment about the sleeping arrangements and merely wandered off to his own room. Sam let himself into the other room and shut the door behind him. 

An hour later, the phone by the bed rang. 

“Hello,” John’s voice said when he picked it up. “Are you busy?”

“Writing,” Sam told him. “What’s up?” 

“Nothing,” John said. “I’m downstairs in the restaurant, and I thought you might like to join me. But I don’t want to disturb you if you’re busy.” 

“I actually ordered room service as soon as I got in,” Sam told him.

“Never mind. It was just a thought.”

"Let me finish this scene, and I’ll come down,” Sam said, and hung up. 

He found John downstairs, apparently trying to balance a wine glass on the head of a small dog that was trying very hard to sit still for him. There was half a soufflé on the table, a glass, and half a bottle of wine. 

“ _Careful,_ ” John said quietly, as Sam eased himself into the seat opposite. “I think Leonard has some real talent. We could make a show dog of him yet, but not if he’s tragically blinded by falling glass. _Good boy,”_ he said to the dog, pulling his hands away, “very good boy.” He reached for the second wine glass, and turned it on its end, balancing it precariously in top of the first. 

“Does the dog belong to someone?” Sam asked. 

“As much as anyone belongs to anyone else,” John said. “Good dog!”

“Someone who wants him back?” Sam asked, pointing at a woman who was rapidly approaching from the other end of the restaurant. 

“ _Leonard?_ ” she called, and the dog twisted its head and ran to her. 

John deftly caught both glasses and placed them back on the table. “Wine, Sam?” 

Sam tipped the bottle towards himself and found the label to be satisfactory. “If I can have the one that didn’t touch the dog.”

“ _Picky,_ ” John said, but he smiled as he poured the wine. He raised his glass with a somewhat ironic tilt. “Thank you for coming.”

“You mean, downstairs?”

“That too,” John said. “None of this is a test, by the way. I really am this difficult. You can ask anyone. In fact, I’m fairly sure you already have.”

“I don’t think you’re difficult,” Sam said, leaning over the table towards him. “I think you’re thoughtless and, on occasion, selfish, but not difficult.” 

“How kind,” John said. He smiled up at the waiter who’d just brought his check. “I’d like to charge it, if that’s OK.”

“I’ll get it,” Sam said, already reaching into his jacket pocket.

“ _I’ll_ get it,“ John said firmly, but still smiling. “I ate the food, I drank the wine, so I will pay. Thank you,” he said, as the waiter took his credit card away. “I know this may be hard to believe,” he said to Sam, “but I can look after myself. I have done for many years.” 

“So I’m having to drive you home across the country, after you lost all your possessions, _because_...?” 

“ _Because,_ ” John said, “I thought it would be nice to spend some time alone with you, I don’t like flying, and I thought it would be fun.” He signed the credit card slip, and handed it back. “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking I’m helpless.”

“I don’t think you’re helpless, either.”

“You could have fooled me,” John said, “and I’m not easily fooled. You called me ‘baby’ the first night we met.”

“ _I like you,_ ” Sam said. “A lot. I can’t help wanting to give you everything you’ve ever needed or wanted, I can barely stop myself from going out and conquering the world to give it to you.” 

“I really don’t want the world,” John said. 

“Why do you think you don’t already have it?”

“Logistical difficulties.”

“Apart from that,” Sam said, smiling. “Just say the word. Anything you need, anything that would make your life easier, happier, it’s yours. You don’t even have to ask. You can ask, though, if you want.”

“As a matter of fact,” John said, “there is something I need.” He leant forwards. “I need,” he said intently, “I _need_ – to go to bed. I’ve been awake since four, and that’s early, even for me.”

“OK,” Sam agreed, “maybe you are a bit difficult.”

“I did try and warn you,” John said. He drained his glass and stood. “Are you – going to bed as well? Now, I mean.”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Sam said, wondering which particular signals John meant to be giving out at this particular moment. 

John stood close to him in the elevator, but it was a very small elevator, and there were a few other people in it, waiting to go up to higher floors. At the third floor, John left him to wander down the corridor alone, but turned round to make sure Sam was following him. Then he stopped abruptly outside Sam’s room, and waited for him to catch up. 

“Goodnight,” John said, “is it?”

“I can walk you to your door,” Sam offered. 

“It’s at the other end of this corridor,” John said, “I don’t think I’m likely to get lost, but-” he paused for a brief moment as the back of Sam’s index finger touched the underside of his chin and stroked backwards, “thank you. Hmm,” he shut his eyes and titled his chin up, “I know I haven’t said it, but I like you very much, as well.” 

“You didn’t have to,” Sam told him, pressing a kiss to his jaw, “but I like hearing it. You can say it again, if you want.”

John smiled and Sam could feel John’s skin moving underneath his lips. “I like you,” he said, “very much. And I really hope you’re not about to tell me to go fuck myself.”

“Not this time.” 

“Good,” John said, and leaned back against the door as Sam kissed him, his hands against Sam’s chest. 

“Inside?” Sam asked. 

“Good idea.”

“Let me-”

“I’ve already got it,” John told him, sliding Sam’s room card out of the lock, and pushing the door open.

“Practice a little sleight of hand ourselves, do we?”

“A _little_?” John grimaced as he pulled off his sweater. “Don’t insult me.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Sam told him, abandoning his own undressing to kiss John, who laughed and pushed him away so he could finish unbuttoning his shirt. 

“ _Stop distracting me._ ” 

“That voice is really not going to make me stop,” Sam said, and backed him towards the bed despite John’s token attempts to get away. 

“Sam,” John said, “ _Sam,_ really,” and then he was wriggling out of his pants underneath Sam, opening his mouth wider as the kisses got deeper. 

Sam helped him out of his boxers, at which point John was suddenly, beautifully naked in a bed Sam technically owned. John’s fingers were deftly unzipping his fly, and then cupped round his ass to pull him down as soon as Sam had kicked off his own pants. Every part of John was underneath and pressed up against him. His erection rubbed needily against Sam’s leg until Sam shifted his hips, and then John was gasping into his mouth and pressing his head back into the pillows and his cock against Sam’s. 

Sam left kissing him to bury his face in the crook of John’s neck. John turned his head, so that his mouth was pressed up against Sam’s ear, and his arms wrapped around Sam’s head, his fingers clutching at Sam’s hair. Sam could feel each of John’s moans against his cheek and lips with each thrust of his hips, and then there was the beautiful sound of John coming undone against his ear, which sent him over the edge. 

John allowed the shortest of companionable resting periods, before he yawned and said, “I’m going to go to sleep now,” kissed Sam and turning away. “But don’t take it as a sign I didn’t enjoy that. I’m just very tired.” 

Sam scooted up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist. “That’s fine. I’m going to hold onto you, but don’t take it as a sign that I think you’re going to fuck off in the middle of the night. I just like you.” 

John laughed. “OK,” he said. “Goodnight then.”

Sam stayed awake for a while, as he had done the last time he’d shared a bed with John. But eventually the warmth of the bed and the other man, and the many miles he’d driven during the day, got the better of him. 

“ _Sam,_ ” John said somewhere in the darkness some hours later. “Sam, wake up. _Sam._ Sam.” 

“ _Wah?_ ” Sam said.

“Good start,” John said and kissed him slightly too quickly for Sam to respond. There was a rustling of paper. “Where’s the rest of this?” 

“Rest of what?” Sam said, and was pleased to hear all the words come out roughly as he’d meant them to. “What time is it?” he said, taking the notebook John was pressing into his hand.

“Eight o’clock.”

“Wait, where did you get this?” Sam asked, focusing on the notebook at last. 

“It was on the desk,” John told him. 

“In a bag.”

“In a bag, on the desk, yes,” John said patiently. “This would be very useful information, but I’ve already found and read this notebook. I need the others.” 

“It’s a first draft,” Sam told him. “I wrote everything here in about an hour. It’s going to get much better. I wanted it to be much better before anyone saw it.” He paused. “Eight o’clock PST, right?”

“MST,” John said. “We’re in Utah. Am I right in assuming the rest isn’t here and that I can’t read it?”

“No, you can’t,” Sam said, “it’s back- sorry, you woke me up for this?”

“That’s right,” John said. “You only have chapters five and six, here. I’d like read the beginning, if possible. And then the end. And the middle again, somewhere in between those two. I can wait, if it isn’t here.”

“You’re saying it’s OK?”

“I wouldn’t have woken you up for a novel that was OK,” John told him.

“What would you say then?”

“Well, I haven’t read the beginning or the end-”

“No backing out now.”

“ _But_ I’d go so far as to say it could well be magnificent.” He smiled. 

“I really like you,” Sam told him. “Have I said that?”

“I think it may have come up one or two times in the last month.” 

“The rest of the stuff I've written is at my house,” Sam said. “We could probably get back to San Francisco tonight, if we left now.”

“Do you want to leave now?” John asked. 

“Do you?”

“ _Well_ ,” John said, “there is the book. Of course. But I also can help but notice you’re in still bed and not wearing any clothes. The last time this happened to me we were stuck in my parents house, and I didn’t take advantage of the situation.”

“We do have the room until midday,” Sam pointed out, sliding closer. 

“That’s wonderful news,” John said. “Stay where you are while I get my camera.”

“Your camera?” 

“Yes, I want to photograph you,” John said. “I’ll be back in a minute!” 

He shut the door behind him and Sam collapsed back on the bed in only half-exaggerated despair. John opened the door again too quickly to have gone anywhere. 

“We’ll be having sex afterwards,” he said. “Repeatedly.”

“Great,” Sam said, and John grinned and shut the door again.


	4. Sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam and John have a relationship, and some things go well and other things don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning(s): Depression issues
> 
> Beta(s): x_los is always very helpful, but this time she was particularly helpful. John's story about China and Sam's housing project owe pretty much everything to her. 
> 
> Notes: This chapter is very long. I can't quite explain that. It's only 22% sex, though, despite the title. That is twice as much as '50 Shades', though. The rest is plot. And Sam's family.
> 
> Erin has suggested I provide some sort of key as to who's who in this chapter, as the ridiculous name swapping continues a-pace. John=the Eighth Doctor, Sam=Roberts!Master, Mary=Bernice Summerfield, Liz=Jo Grant, Joe=Mike Yates, Evelyn=Harry Sullivan (that's a boy's name, too. Oh yes). I think everyone else is just themselves in this chapter, although there's a brief mention of Brax. Who is Brax.
> 
> Chapter 5 is... conceived of.

**Chapter 4: Sex**

_March 1996_

Sex, John thought headily, was good. Very good. Particularly, he thought, tightening his grip on the bed sheet, anal sex. That was very, very good. It didn’t seem like it would be until it was happening to you, but at that point it began to seem like one of the best things anyone had ever thought of. Sam, apparently, wasn’t keen on it ever happening to him again, which John considered a mistake, but one he was happy to profit from for the moment. Simultaneous intense physical pain and intense physical pleasure, both doled out by someone you liked enough to let them do this to you. John liked ambiguity, and he really liked sex. 

This was fortunate because he’d been having rather a lot of it lately – or rather, he’d been having rather a lot of it lately, and that made him feel very fortunate. And slightly sore, but in a good way. In a very good way. Very, very –

 _“– good,”_ he told the mattress and the very nice man buggering him senseless. _“That feels very good. Very –”_

“I can tell,” Sam said breathily next to his ear. “The quips have stopped.”

“I’m sure I could – ah, _good,”_ John told him. _“Good. Good –”_

 _“John?”_ a young woman called from out in the corridor. 

Sam froze, his cock buried deep inside John’s arse. _“Shit.”_

He sighed, and dropped his head to John’s shoulders. “Not again.”

 _“John?_ Are you –?”

The door of John’s room opened about an inch and hit the chair that Sam had jammed against it ten minutes ago. It wobbled threateningly. 

“John?” the person outside said. “I think your door’s stuck. Are you all right? If you’ve been knocked out by something heavy, don’t worry. I know CPR. I’ll get someone to help shift the door, hang on –” 

“Stop laughing,” Sam suggested, only half-amused, “and say something.”

“I’m fine, Liz! I’ll be down in a moment.”

“You’re sure you’re not trapped under something heavy?”

“Not trapped, no,” John told her. 

_“Hey,”_ Sam protested, low in his ear. 

“What?” 

“I’m not heavy.”

“You’re not under you.”

“OK. I guess I’ll see you downstairs,” Liz Shaw called, “but hurry up. I’ve got something interesting to tell you.” Her high heels clattered off down the corridor. 

John craned his neck to look at the half of Sam that was visible from this angle. “Is the moment ruined, do you think?” 

“Pretty much,” Sam said. “I could probably still finish, though, if you’re interested.”

John raised an eyebrow. “After a line like that?”

“Not one of my best, I agree. So, that’s a no,” Sam said with a sigh. He pushed up from the bed with his hands and pulled himself out. The springs creaked loudly. “Great.”

“We can try again later,” John promised, rolling off the bed to hunt for his trousers as Sam dropped the used condom into his wastepaper basket. “After the performance.”

“No problem,” Sam said. He pulled on his shirt. “We are going back to mine, though.”

“You live forty minutes away from the opera house, I live ten minutes away.”

“Yeah, in a shit hole where you can’t even shut the door.” 

“Don’t insult my house. I like it.”

“Who was insulting your house? I use shit hole as an affectionate term.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t. I hate it here.”

“I know. I’m very lucky you’re willing to put up with it despite that,” John teased. He leaned into Sam, who was still without trousers, and kissed him gently, sliding a hand under the top edge of Sam’s boxer shorts. 

“You are,” Sam told him, wrapping his arms around John. “We are still going back to my house tonight.”

“All right,” John conceded, “but you should know the door does shut. I just don’t shut it because it jams and, despite what some people might tell you, I don’t actually _like_ climbing out of windows.”

Sam grinned. “I don’t think I know this one.”

“Then there are some advantages to changing country every few years.”

“You’re not going to tell me about it?”

“I’ll tell you later.” 

“Tell me now,” Sam suggested.

“I have to go and talk to Liz,” John reminded him. Sam groaned and dropped his head to John’s shoulders. “And you, Mr Jones, have some writing to do.”

“I could do it here –” Sam began. A heavy truck rolled past, the walls shook and a photograph of the Mona Lisa fell off the wall. 

“Yeah, I’ll go home,” he concluded. 

John was already fully dressed, so, leaving Sam to find the rest of his clothes, he tugged the chair out from underneath the door handle and released the door. 

The corridor outside his room was covered in dingy floral wallpaper that had clearly been put up a few decades earlier and forgotten about. The carpet, on the other hand, was new and poorly fitted – none of the corners were nailed down and the floorboards underneath creaked in a way that suggested they weren’t either. Sam had once offered to get the hallway re-done, but this suggestion had been met with raucous laughter and John had had to point out later that the hallway was probably as it was on purpose. You could hide plenty of things under a loose floorboard, if you wanted to. 

Down in the laundrette below the residency floor, he found Liz seated on top of a washing machine with a huge fan of cards in her hands. Although she wasn’t the brightest student in John’s junior class, she was easily one of his favourites. She was resourceful, but more than that she was charming and keen: interested in everything and everyone, and always the first to volunteer an answer or for a task. Around her on the benches sat Billy and Tony, who lived in the two rooms down the hall from John; Greg, who nominally ran the laundrette; and Charlie Pollard, who knew Greg, but refused to say how. Most of them were seasoned poker players and everyone, except Charlie, who seemed happy with the way he’d ended up seated next to Liz’s legs, looked mutinous. 

“What’s the game?” John asked, hopping up on the washing machine beside Liz. 

“A stupid game,” Tony said. 

“Happy Families,” Liz corrected. 

“It’s too easy.”

“Then why are you losing?” Charlie asked.

“Like I said, it’s too easy. And I haven’t had a turn yet. When can we go back to poker?”

“You said I could choose the game if we played for money,” Liz reminded him. “Now, you have Mr Bun the baker, don’t you, Tony? And Charlie, you must have _Miss_ Bun–”

“I certainly do.”

“I didn’t think you’d have a whole sack of games on you,” Tony grumbled.

The laundrette phone rang and Greg went off to answer it after handing his cards to Liz. “You might as well take these now, love.” 

_“Scrabble!”_ John exclaimed, pulling it out of Liz’s handbag. “If I get to choose next, I choose Scrabble.” 

“Scrabble’s a four person game, Professor,” Billy said. “And there’s six of us. So.”

“We could play in teams,” Liz suggested. 

“Or we could play a _kind of_ poker,” Tony said. 

“Tony, do you have Mrs Pint, the milkman’s wife?”

“No!” Tony said triumphantly. “Right, my turn– oh fuck, I do have her. Damn you, woman.”

“So, what was this very exciting thing you were going to tell me?” John asked Liz. 

“I can’t tell you now, can I? Everyone will hear.”

“Hear what?” Charlie asked.

“Exactly,” Liz said. “Billy – do you have Mr Green the grocer?”

“I do not. Right, so it’s my go now. Tone– what about Mrs Plod?”

“What’s this interesting thing?” Charlie asked, leaning up close to the washing machine Liz was sitting on. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. Cross my heart, hope to die.”

The door behind the counter opened and Sam walked out into the laundrette. He was fully dressed again, which was something of a shame despite how good he looked in clothes, but his hair was ruffled sexily from where the gel had rubbed off and he hadn’t been able to smooth it down again properly. Without anyone saying anything it was suddenly very obvious what had been going on when Liz had knocked on his door. Embarrassment and a sort of dopey pleasure that everyone in the laundrette knew Sam was his fought within John briefly. He grinned sheepishly, which seemed to cover it, turning this into a real smile as Sam met his eyes. 

“I’ll pick you up at six, OK?” 

“Oh Samuel, I’ve been waiting for this day,” Charlie said. “I’ll have my cape ready. I can’t wait for a night at the opera! It’ll be just like Pretty Woman.”

“That sounds fine,” John said, ignoring Charlie, which was really all one could do sometimes, “but I think you should know we’re bringing out the Scrabble after this.”

“Really?”

 _“No,”_ Tony said and the same time as John said, 

“Oh yes.”

“Well, I am the Scrabble master,” Sam said. “Ring me, if you need any help.”

“Thank you for the offer, but it’s not necessary,” John told him. “Last time we played I put down a ten-letter word,” he informed Liz. 

“And still lost,” Sam said. “See you at six. _John,_ ” he said with a meaningful look at Charlie, who pretended to crumple.

“Oh, I see. It’s like that, is it?”

“Bye,” Sam said, with a quick smile for John. 

As he turned to go, Charlie spanked him hard across the arse. Sam turned slowly. He raised an eyebrow. He looked at Charlie, who was grinning, up at John, who was concentrating on frowning, and back at Charlie. 

“Don’t do that again,” he said and left, swinging his satchel over his shoulder. 

“Like smacking an anvil,” Charlie told the assembled company, shaking his hand to get rid of the sting. “Totally worth it, though.”

John let his frown collapse into laughter. Three more of his students turned up as Liz collected her final families, and then Martin, who wanted to poke at the remote console for the thermal imager. 

Rather than let his TA fruitlessly rip apart his room, John went upstairs with to show him where it was and potentially kick any embarrassing objects out of sight. He needn’t have worried, however, as, in his absence, Sam had made the bed and repatriated the condoms and lubricant to the bedside cupboard. Looking at the crisply folded sheets, John felt an almost overwhelming surge of affection for him, which was only compounded by the note on his pillow that read, _Wish I were here. S_

He found the remote, gave it to Martin, and headed back down to the laundrette where Tony had challenged Liz to Connect 4 and everyone else was playing poker. John was dealt in and brought into a conversation about whether students should be allowed to use the telescopes without supervision. John’s students were generally of the opinion that they should, whereas, unfortunately, the teaching staff was generally of the opinion that they should not. John promised he would look into the matter. 

“All right,” Greg called, after John had won a few rounds, “everybody clear out. I’ve got a very important laundry delivery coming in. Even you, Professor. Out.”

“But,” John said nonplussed, “I live here.” 

“You can come back in an hour. Now out.”

The students streamed out, and Liz caught John round the waist. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you what I came here to tell you,” she pointed out. 

“Well, I’m at a loose end for the next hour. Do you want to go for coffee?”

“Can’t, sorry. I’ve got a date. I’ll see you on Monday, though, for class!”

He waved her off. The rest of his students had already dispersed. John turned right out of his street and ambled along for a bit, taking note of the new graffiti. After a while he pulled out his mobile and called Sam, who answered almost immediately. 

“Good timing. I just got back. What’re your letters?”

“My what? My – Oh, I don’t have any. We didn’t play.”

“Wise move for all involved.”

 _“Be nice,_ ” John said, smiling. “I’ve been evicted, and I’m now in a very fragile emotional state.” 

“Whoah. For real? Hang on, let me get the champagne –”

“Just for an hour, I’m afraid. Top secret laundrette business.”

“Ah,” Sam said wisely. “Pants from the President, right? What’re you up to now, then?”

“Nothing,” John told him. “Walking around, I think, until they let me back in.” 

“Do you want me to come back into town?”

Yes, John thought, selfishly. 

“No,” he said. “I just thought it would be nice to talk to you again. How’s your writing going?”

“Well, like I said, I just got in, and then you rang me, so not very well.”

“Do you want to get back to it?”

“No, but I probably should.”

“All right,” John said. “I suppose I can find something else to do.” 

“Good luck,” Sam said, and hung up. John, who had vaguely intended to just chat to him until they met again, was left at something of a loss. Increasingly what he did when he wasn’t doing anything else, and often when he was, was talk to Sam. 

Idly he walked down to the Bay, where he met an old man called Doug, who offered to take him out on his boat some time, and joined a group of ten-year-olds in a complicated skipping game.

It had become a very nice evening by the time he returned home. All the washing machines were churning busily, which meant there would be no hot water upstairs. This turned out not to be an issue, however, as when John opened the door to his room he found Sam already there, sitting on the bed in a black suit that was as crisp as the sheets. 

John smiled as he pushed the chair back under the door handle. “You’re early.” 

“I was sitting at home,” Sam told him, “thinking about how if things went the way we’d planned I’d have to wait until ten this evening to have sex with my boyfriend. Whereas if I left an hour early, I could do it now. I guess,” he said, getting up and crossing to the door, “you know what I decided.”

“Staying home, was it?” John asked, as Sam caught him up in his arms. 

Neither of them had said boyfriend before. It was a slightly odd word for either of them and one John usually avoided, but the sound of it on Sam’s lips was strangely arousing and he was already halfway hard when Sam kissed him. He ran his hands down Sam’s chest, over the mother-of-pearl fastenings on his shirt, down to his trouser flies, and then back up to the fastenings. 

“It’s only somewhat a shame,” he remarked, as Sam kissed his neck and opened his trousers for him, “really, that you’re so nicely dressed, now.”

“Don’t worry,” Sam told him, “I hadn’t planned to wait long enough to take everything off.” He pulled John’s boxers down and pushed him into the chair. The wooden seat was cold under John’s arse, but it was so much less important than how warm and close Sam’s mouth was around his cock. 

Oral sex, John thought as he stroked Sam’s hair, was good, very good. Pure physical pleasure and if he stopped his head lolling back against the door he could see Sam’s mouth around him, and the way Sam had unzipped his own trousers and was busily jerking himself off. _Fuck,_ John thought, as he groaned aloud, _fuck, fuck –_

“Louder,” Sam said, drawing back for a moment. “It’s so sexy, you have no idea.”

 _“Fuck,”_ John told him, _“fuck, yes, good, yes, that’s good, that’s good, Sam, yes, please, oh god, you’re so lovely– so, fuck, fuck–”_ and he came into Sam’s mouth. He could feel Sam swallowing around him and then letting go as he gasped into his own orgasm. 

Weakly, John slid down the chair and onto him, letting Sam catch him up and draw him safely down onto the floor and into a kiss that was rich and sour with come. Eventually the deep kisses faded into lighter ones that John could speak around.

“Sex,” he told Sam, “is very good. I think it is, anyway. I wouldn’t want to speak for you –”

“No, I think so, too.”

John smiled down at him. “That’s good. I think we should have it more often. If at all possible. What do you think?”

“We’re already averaging about twice a day,” Sam told him. “By which I mean you’re completely right.” He stroked John’s naked back, moving down the side of his hips. “And I really am one lucky– oh shit, have I come on my pants?” He tried to sit up and John obliging moved off him. “Shit,” Sam said, wiping at his knee rather futilely. “Have you got, like, clothes wipes or something?”

“This is a place of cleaning,” John told him, laughing, “apparently. Stay there, and I’ll look into it.” 

He pulled up his own trousers and went downstairs to find Greg reading _Guardian of Time_ behind the counter. After a quick rummage in a dusty back room, a large box of industrial-strength wipes was produced and John returned upstairs and dropped them into Sam’s lap.

“Thanks,” Sam said. “This had better work. Christ– I’m going to look like a complete dick.” 

“I could lend you a long cloak,” John suggested. He drew off his shirt and pulled his dress shirt off the hanging rail to the side of his bed. “ You could keep it on for the entire evening, pretend you’re a mysterious Eastern European count. I rather like that idea.”

“Or we could just stay here,” Sam said, close behind him, apparently drawn by John’s shirtlessness. He dropped the wipes on the bed. “Get a head start on that new five-a-day average.”

“Mm,” John leaned back into his embrace. Then, a thought struck him, and he turned frowning. 

“What?” Sam said. 

“I don’t think I believe you,” John told him. 

“About what?” Sam said, frowning in confusion. He hadn’t yet realised that pretending not to even understand the accusations was the least convincing way for a clever man to cover up his misdemeanours. And Sam was very clever. In three months, John had only ever seen him looking confused when he had something to hide. 

“Now I definitely don’t believe you,” John murmured. He pressed the clothing wipes back into Sam’s hands and kissed him, because this deception was as sweet as it was poorly conceived. “Nice try, but it’s La traviata. We’re going, whatever state your trousers are in.” Sam pouted and John pulled away from him. “Now, where are my cufflinks?”

The performance was entrancing and the fact that John was forced to sit in a box that literally had his name on it was gradually becoming less embarrassing. John would usually have gone backstage after the performance, but the heavy-lidded way Sam had been looking at him all the way through the third act made it difficult to imagine anything other than going home immediately. 

Sam had booked them a taxi, which was waiting in the road outside. In general, John was for snogging in the back of taxis (and had, in fact, once had sex in one), but he’d tried it a few weeks ago and Sam had shut it down almost immediately without explanation. John was still considering whether he ought to challenge Sam on this. For the moment he contented himself with reading the opera programme and stroking parts of Sam that were beneath the driver’s eye-line as arousal rushed around his system and Sam tried to bat him away. 

Sam’s house was far too far away. 

“Next time we’re going to mine,” John said as the taxi pulled up in Sam’s drive. 

“Dream on,” Sam told him. 

“Think about it logically,” John said, warming to his theme as Sam unlocked the door, “if we’d gone to my house, as I suggested, we could already have had sex by now.”

“Exactly,” Sam said. He pulled off his jacket and began undoing his cuffs. “I pity the versions of us that went back to your house, and not only because they have to sleep in your shitty bed. What are they going to be doing for the next half an hour? Showering? Going to sleep? Whereas I’m going to have my dick inside you while you pant and keen and fuck yourself against my mattress.” 

“Well, yes, if you put it like _that,_ ” John said, dropping his shirt on the stairs. 

“I do,” Sam said, with a grin, and slammed the bedroom door shut after himself. 

*

John woke early the next morning in Sam’s large, white bedroom, a spring breeze ruffling the white curtains. He stretched and turned, the sunlight warm on his face. It was, he admitted to himself, a very nice place to wake up in, even if it did lack character – a fault one would not typically have associated with Sam. 

Where Sam himself should have been there was a post-it note that read, _Gone running. Back at 10,_ and a cat. 

“Hello Gemma,” John said to it. The cat stared at him. “How are you this morning?” He reached out scratched her behind the ears. The cat did not move away. “I assume that means you’re well.” 

John closed his eyes again, turned over, but the nagging feeling that he was being watched meant he couldn’t drift off again and he opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. The cat was still watching him balefully. “Actually do you mind not looking at me for another hour?” John asked her. “I’d quite like to –” he yawned to show he was serious “– go back to sleep.” 

Whether or not the cat minded, it gave no sign. John tried to go back to sleep anyway, but after about ten more minutes he gave it up as a bad job. 

Sam had brought some of some of John’s clothes back to his house a while ago, but John had not yet been able to locate them without Sam’s help. They were tidied away inside some cupboard or drawer, partly because Sam believed things should be orderly if possible and partly, and perhaps more relevantly, because Sam liked John to walk around naked in the mornings. John liked the way Sam’s eyes followed him around the room when he was naked and so he hadn’t kicked up a fuss about the clothes yet. 

He was therefore completely naked as he walked into Sam’s kitchen (expecting to make himself tea and perhaps some toast) and discovered a woman in a bright pink suit eating a bowl of muesli at the table. 

“Ah.” John grabbed Sam’s jacket from the chair. “This is very embarrassing. I’m so sorry. Sam didn’t say anything –”

“Not embarrassing for me, darling,” the woman said. “Don’t be so selfish. I call it informative. And very large.”

John blinked at her. “Was that a zeugma?” 

“Innuendo,” the woman said. “Don’t they have that in England? How disappointing. I thought they did.” She swallowed another spoonful of muesli and said, “I must say, I thought you’d be more handsome. Not that there’s anything wrong with you, darling, in fact in some areas, obviously, quite the reverse, but – well, you have a somewhat unusual face, don’t you think?”

“No,” John said bemused. “I’ve always thought I was rather striking. People, many people, in fact, have compared me to Pre-Raphaelite paintings.” 

“Well, and just look at what they found attractive. Lizzie Siddal had a very odd face.”

“I don’t have an odd face.”

“Whatever you say, darling. I said unusual. I assume you’re employed.”

“Er,” John said, taken aback at this change in subject, “yes. I teach – physics. At Berkeley.”

“Head of Department?”

John made a face. “I said I taught people, not that I arranged the timetable.” 

She grinned. “Saucy. I like that. Tenure?” 

“No, I’ve only been in the country six months– Sorry, do you mind if I put some clothes on before we have the rest of this conversation?”

“I know you meant that rhetorically, but since you asked: yes, I must say I do. It’s nice to have a naked man around the house. But,” she said, shrugging, “if it will make your more comfortable, I suppose you’d better. I expect he’s hidden your clothes under the bed. I saw some things that didn’t belong to Sam there last time I was here.” She returned to her muesli. 

“Right. Thank you,” John said. The woman smiled brightly at him as he backed up the stairs. 

Up in Sam’s room, John found Gemma the cat asleep in the space he’d previously occupied. She opened one eye as he came in. 

“Thanks for warning me,” he said to her as he scooped his mobile up from the floor. The cat closed her eyes again, as though to say he’d brought it on himself. 

John dialled Sam’s number and waited six rings before Sam answered, good-humoured and slightly out of breath. 

“I said I’d be back at ten. Couldn’t you wait that long?”

“I don’t think so, no,” John told him.

“Really? Well, I can get a cab. What are you wearing? Is it worth it?”

“Nothing.”

“OK, I’ll get a cab –”

“Sam, this isn’t a come on,” John said, exasperated. 

“Right,” Sam said. “Sorry. What’s up?”

“You don’t have a well-dressed and judgemental cleaning lady, do you? Perhaps a housemate I’ve never seen before?”

“No. Neither.”

“In that case, I just met your mother.”

“My mother.”

“Yes.”

“And you were wearing –”

“Nothing, as discussed.”

“Right. I’ll get a cab and be back in five,” Sam said and hung up. 

John’s relationship with his own parents was very simple. They loved him, he loved them and chose to live as far away from them as possible. Sam, on the other hand, had chosen to live in the same city as his parents (Samuel and Lydia Jones, divorced since 1985), which John had initially hypothesised meant that he liked them a lot. Sam had never exactly denied this, but he’d also said that he wasn’t going to be forced out of a city he’d put so much work into just because his parents liked it too. 

John took a shower and then spent the next minute or so trying to work out how to open the compartments under Sam’s bed. As they finally slid open, there was the sound of the front door slamming and Sam’s mother called,

“Sammy! You’re home so early. I thought I’d get at least another half an hour alone with your new boy.” 

“Don’t make it sound like I picked up one of my students,” Sam snapped, already well on the way to being very angry. 

“I’m not!”

“John’s forty two and one of the pillars of the academic community.”

“I know, darling, we had a lovely chat before you arrived, and of course I can see that he’s not a little boy at all.” 

“No. Don’t do that either.”

“Do what? I made an observation. That must be allowed. And, if I may venture another, I’m afraid you smell terrible, darling.”

“Yes. Thank you. If you hadn’t decided to drop in while you knew I was out running, I could have showered before you arrived.”

“Well, that would have defeated the point, wouldn’t it? Betty telephoned me last night to say she’d seen you out at the, what was it, opera with some man and did I know who it was. And of course I didn’t, which was too embarrassing for words, so I rang Ally, but she _said_ – emphasis on said, of course – that she didn’t know anything about it either. And so here I am, on behalf of the family. Well, not your father. But then I dare say he doesn’t care.”

“I don’t even know how you got in,” Sam said. “I changed the locks last week.”

“Darling, don’t be unpleasant. I’m just taking an interest in my offspring-”

“No, you’re invading my privacy and my home. If you wanted to show an interest we could go out for coffee or something –”

“Fabulous. I’m free this Wednesday at six.”

“I’m –” Sam said, and faltered.

“–completely free. I know. I’ve checked your diary,” Lydia said, kind in his defeat. 

“Fine,” Sam said, resigned. “Just please don’t walk in here any more, OK?” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she told him. “Ah, John, darling, there you are. Waited until the fight was over, I see.” 

“I know,” John said, feeling much more chipper now he was dressed in his usual cashmere and cotton. “I feel quite ashamed. Should I have intervened?”

“There is no intervening against my mother,” Sam said. 

“Very true, darling. Now John, are you free on Wednesday?”

“No,” Sam said triumphantly. “He isn’t. Not on Wednesdays. Never on Wednesdays.”

“Cricket practice,” John supplied. 

“Well, never mind. You’re free now, aren’t you? Sam’s diary was empty, so you must be. I’ve got a car waiting outside and two hours before my next meeting. I want to get to know you properly and of course I can show you the house where Sam grew up. We have a couple of Rosettis, if you like that sort of thing. Please say yes.”

“Thank you. I’d be delighted,” John told her.

“Wait, what?” Sam said, turning on him. 

“It seems like a nice idea,” John said. “And, even if it isn’t, I’ll be back in two hours. That’s all right, surely.” 

“OK,” Sam said, rubbing his face. “If you insist on going, I’ll go with you –”

“No, darling,” his mother trilled, “I’m afraid I couldn’t allow it. Not until you’ve washed and changed out of those terrible clothes.”

“Well, wait fifteen minutes –”

“I only have two hours until my next meeting. No– one hour, fifty-five minutes, how time flies. I can’t afford to waste any more time or we won’t get back. John?”

“That does seem reasonable.” 

“You planned this,” Sam said, pointing an accusatory finger at his mother. “This is exactly what you wanted to happen.”

“Well, of course, darling. Where do you think you got it from? Now, I’ll have him back in two hours, don’t you worry. No, don’t kiss me until after your bath.” 

“You _can_ kiss me,” John told him. “Even though, I agree, you could ideally be cleaner.”

“I don’t know if I want to, now you’ve betrayed me,” Sam said, even as he leant forward and kissed John gently. 

“Boys, really,” Sam’s mother said. 

“I’ll be back before you know it,” John said, pulling his camera cord over his neck. “Now, Lydia, I can call you Lydia, can’t I?”

“Oh, of course, dear.”

“Shall we be off?” He offered her his arm and she took it, smiling radiantly. 

Lydia’s car was very large and curvaceous. It was the same dark blue as Sam’s BMW and, in fact, looked very much like it might have given birth to the smaller car, which was sitting next to it rather forlornly. A tall man, possessed of excellent hearing, intuition or patience, was holding open the back door. 

“Thank you, David,” Lydia said to him, and slid in over the cream leather seats. John followed her and the tall man shut the door behind them. There were two glasses of champagne already out on a small, pull-out table. 

“You really have planned all this,” John observed with a grin as she clinked their glasses together. 

Lydia’s house was about fifteen minutes away from her son’s. It loomed large in the windows of the car as John finished explaining the rules of cricket and why he liked it. 

“I prefer the kind of sports where tiny shorts are compulsory,” Lydia said, as the car swung into the driveway through a large pair of iron gates. “I try to get excited about the competitive element, but it all seems so pointless. I mean, nobody really wins or loses anything, do they?”

“I think, in many ways, that _is_ the point,” John said. 

The door was opened for him, and he got out of the car and stared up at the house. It had turrets and a large, purple front door. 

“It’s suddenly become very clear to me why Sam’s house is the way it is,” he observed, raising his camera. 

“Fabulous, isn’t it?” Lydia said, looking up at the house, too, as he photographed it. “My absolute favourite thing about being divorced. Even getting to have sex with men half my age pales in comparison.” She turned to look at him. “How old did Sam say you were, again, darling?” 

“Thirty eight.” John grinned at her. “Can I escort you inside, Mrs Jones?”

“After that?” she asked, taking his offered arm. “I can see you like to live dangerously, Mr Smith. Fortunately, I don’t steal men from my children or you might be in real trouble.”

Behind the purple front door was a corridor lined with cream, gold and black porcelain. The lighting shone from underneath so each of the pots seemed to glow. 

“Oh,” John said, “ _my._ I’ve never seen so much Satsuma outside Japan.” He peered more closely at the nearest piece through the zoom on his camera. “It looks like the good stuff, too. _Beautifully_ painted¬– Look at this-”

“You can touch it, if you like,” Lydia said, tugging off her gloves.

“You don’t mean that.” 

“Darling, you can touch everything in this house,” Lydia told him. “Absolutely _everything.”_

John stopped himself from dancing, dropped his camera on its cord and reached down to pick up a small bowl in both hands. “It’s so light,” he said, filled with the wonder of the thing. “So delicate.” He could feel the lines of paint under his fingertips. “You can just imagine someone incredibly poised drinking from it –” He put it back before his hands started trembling. A thought struck him–

“Can I touch the Rosettis?”

He wandered round the house in a haze, always vaguely making for Sam’s room and being distracted by Chinese jade, German porcelain or African carvings. He’d found a brocade waistcoat hanging on the back of a door in one room and had been trying to pretend it had just fallen on him when Lydia had told him he could keep it. It was, John thought, one of the best days ever. Eventually, however, he found what he’d been looking for on the third floor, marked by a brass plaque. With a sense of expectation, he pushed open the door. 

The room behind it was abandoned. And very black. The walls were covered in empty book shelves. A single wardrobe, worn smooth with time, stood against one wall, holding a pair of skis and several coat hangers. The chest-of-drawers was also empty and the bed was stripped of sheets. John had been intending to photograph Sam’s room extensively so he could study it in much the same way as he studied the photographs he already had of Sam, which documented the way Sam smiled and the different ways he held books, pens and wine glasses. But it was clear the room would tell him nothing except that Sam had been an angry, bookish teenager and was now angry in a different way. 

“He doesn’t visit very often,” Lydia said from the doorway. 

“Well,” John said, feeling the full awkwardness of the moment but wanting to defend Sam no matter how fair the accusation. “He doesn’t live far away.”

“You’re probably right,” she said briskly. “Now, I’m afraid, darling, that I’m going to have to cut our time here short. My meeting’s been brought up to one o’clock– I hate running on other people’s schedules, but that is business, apparently. We’ll have to go to my offices first, but David can drop you off at Sam’s house afterwards. I assume that’s all right with you?”

“Of course,” John told her, and shut the door to the empty room behind him. 

“Is it an important meeting?” he asked as the car pulled out of the drive again. 

Lydia sighed. “Oh, not really. I just have to approve some new stock, which is annoying because I really don’t want to, but if we don’t take this lot we’ll just have to take something else with the same problem, so I suppose there’s nothing for it.” She looked at John, archly. “Did Sam tell you what I do?”

“Yes,” John said, just as archly.

 _“Hm,”_ Lydia said. She regarded him thoughtfully. “Does he tell you everything?”

“I don’t know,” John said. He thought about it. “I assume so.”

“Has he told you that his last boyfriend was a senator?”

“Yes.”

“Republican or Democrat?”

“Republican.” 

“Terrible, I know. We’re well rid of him. Has he... let me see. Has he told you he didn’t leave the country until he was thirty five?”

“Yes. Heidelberg, 1989.”

“Very good, darling,” Lydia said. “Has he told you that he believed in Santa until he was fourteen?”

“Yes. I quite like that about him.”

“So do I. Has he told you he wanted to be a cowboy when he was little?”

“No,” John said laughing.

“Good,” Lydia said. “That was a silly lie he was telling people a few years ago. I was there, when he was little, naturally, and it was a musketeer or nothing.”

“You can’t fault his judgement. Both professions come with excellent hats.”

“Well, my son has good taste most of the time,” Lydia said. “Has he told you he’s in love with you?” 

John raised an eyebrow. 

“A mother always knows,” Lydia said wisely.

“Particularly if she’s been reading her son’s diary?” John offered. 

She laughed. “No, don’t be silly, dear. Sammy doesn’t have a diary– imagine if he did. It was his novel. The new one he’s working on now. Have you read it?” 

“Yes,” John said. “Several times. And so, when I say I’m fairly sure I’m not in it, what I mean is that I’m sure I’m not in it.”

“Not obviously,” she agreed. “It’s the tone.” Her phone rang from inside her handbag. “Takes a mother to spot it,” she continued, taking out boxes and bags from inside the larger one, “but once you know the person in question well, after, oh, after about two hours, it becomes very easy. Where is that phone? Oh, thank you, John, dear. Yes?” she said into the phone. “No, I’m on my way in... Well, what do you want from me? David is already breaking the speed limit.”

John picked up one of the objects that had been dumped onto the seat between them. It was a single, cherry-red plastic tube, rounded at one end and with a switch at the other. The rest of the bags and boxes also contained brightly coloured tubes of various sizes, some of which looked more like penises than others. Out of interest, John flicked the switch at the end of the toy he was holding and it began to vibrate in his hands. He frowned, switched it off and opened it. 

“Darling, are you all right?” Lydia asked, as he began hunting in his coat for a small screwdriver. 

“It’s very loud,” John told her. “And very inefficient, given its size and the size of its motor.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Lydia told the phone. “That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Nice colours, cute design, but they’re all too loud. Who in the world wants to get off with the sound of a helicopter humming in their privates? Anyone in the next room or out in the street will know what you’re up to.”

“It should be relatively easy to fix,” John explained, pressing some more liquid plastic into the cavity before he closed it up again. “I don’t even have the right tools or materials here, but I should think that’s a lot better already.” He switched it on again and dropped it into her outstretched palm. It buzzed silently and John picked up another box, which this time had a large blue dildo inside it. “What’s the problem with this one?” He switched it on and it squirmed in his hand. “Hm, the movement’s not very good, and it’s loud, again. I see what you mean.” He peeled off the latex cover and began deconstructing it. 

“I’ll call you back,” Lydia told the phone and hung up. 

*

It was another four hours before John let himself back into Sam’s house. Sam’s sister Alice, her plaster cast recently removed, was sitting curled in a chair. Sam himself was stretched out on the sofa. 

“Hey, look at that,” Alice said, as Sam moved to make space for John, “she hadn’t kidnapped him after all. You owe me five bucks.” 

John grinned, dumped his bag on the floor and went to turn on the kettle, which was new and very shiny. It had obviously just arrived in Sam’s house only a few days before John himself had come here for the first time, but John considered a house empty without a kettle and had allowed Sam to give him this. 

“I don’t trust it,” Sam said, watching him with faux suspicion from the sofa. “She probably just let him out on parole for good behaviour and will be back to collect in an hour.”

“Actually I escaped,” John told them. “Climbed down the fire escape during a coffee break and bribed my way past the guards.”

“You shouldn’t have come back here,” Alice told him. “It’s the first place she’ll look.”

“That’s true,” Sam agreed. “Rookie mistake.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” John said, pouring water into a teapot (also new) as Sam joined him in the kitchen. “Probably that you missed me. Now I see I was mistaken, I’ll just go–”

“Oh, baby, of course I missed you,” Sam told him, sliding into his personal space and trapping him pleasantly against the counter. “It’s been _six hours.”_

“I know,” John murmured into his kiss.

“I almost came looking for you after two.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t actually.”

“Ally stopped me,” Sam explained. 

“Oh, yes, that reminds me. Alice –”

“It’s all right,” Alice said, packing her things into her handbag. “I’m going now. Don’t move on my account.”

“I’m John,” John said, holding out a hand to her around Sam. “I hear we’ve never met.”

Alice rolled her eyes but shook the proffered hand. “That’s just wishful thinking.”

“I thought you liked me now.”

“That’s wishful thinking, too,” she said. “Don’t take it personally. I hate everyone as a general rule.”

“Except me,” Sam said.

“Except you, which is why I lied to mom about John. OK, enjoy your reunion after your six hours – please, really? – apart,” she said, opening the door. “Sam, you can give me that five bucks whenever. Ciao.”

Sam watched her go and then turned back to kiss John again. “How was it really?”

“It was nice,” John told him. “It was really nice.”

“No, really.”

“No, really. I like your mother.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, twining a finger in John’s hair, “but you like some really awful people. And I’m not even talking about me.”

“I don’t think you’re awful.”

“That’s cute.”

“Mm. But you should give your mother a chance. She’s interesting, she’s generous, she cares about you – her house is full of the most unbelievable things. Oh– I put my hands on a Rosetti,” John continued, getting a bit distracted remembering it. “I stroked his brush strokes.”

“This is sounding very intimate. My mother and Rosetti. Should I be jealous?”

“Not at all,” John told him, moving out and around him, “because, and speaking of intimate, I have discovered a hitherto unlooked for talent. And have been handsomely rewarded for it.” He passed Sam the bag he’d earlier dropped by the door and fought back a smirk. Inside it there were five or six dildos of different sizes, various vibrators, butt-plugs, cock-rings, a pair of handcuffs and a collar.

Sam took the bag, looked inside, paused– and handed it back. 

“Great,” he said.

John frowned. “You’re not pleased. I thought you would be pleased.” In fact, he’d thought Sam would be ecstatic. He’d _thought_ that the only reason Sam didn’t customarily handcuff him to beds before pushing large things into him was that Sam was mistakenly worried about scaring him off. Apparently not.

“I know you meant well, but no,” Sam said. “This is the worst idea.”

“Are you sure? What about Tesla’s earthquake machine? That was a very bad idea, as I would have told him if he’d asked me.”

“Just drop it,” Sam said. 

“I would, but I don’t understand. And I hate not understanding things almost as much as I like having sex with you. Which, as you know, is a lot.”

“OK. Let’s see, shall we? My mother was in the same room as me for, what, a minute? No, less than a minute before she began making jokes about sex. How much do you think I want her knowing I have kinky sex using toys she provided? In case you’re wondering, it’s not much.”

“Ah. All right. I see,” John said. “So what you’re saying is that you’d rather not use something like this,” he held up a large dildo and contemplated it, “to fuck me while you suck me off because... you’re afraid of what your mother will say?”

“...What? No,” Sam said, momentarily distracted. “That is, not afraid, so much as,” he frowned, _“humiliated –”_

John raised an eyebrow. “Are you ashamed of me?”

“Of course not,” Sam snapped. “That’s the point.”

“Really? How?”

“I don’t want anything about you to be a source of mockery. The fact that we have sex is amazing, not a fucking joke my mother can laugh about with her friends, or something anyone can use against me, or that I want people in the street to shout at me about, all right?”

“I see. Is that why you don’t touch me in public?”

“Yes,” Sam said, looking worn out and defeated. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t want people to know you’re mine, it’s really not.”

“OK,” John said, moving into his arms. “OK,” he said, as Sam kissed him. “I understand.”

“Thank you,” Sam murmured. 

“Now,” John said, “assuming that I accept that there are some very valid reasons you might want to not flaunt our relationship in public, which I do, will you accept that your mother already knows we have sex, has seen me naked and has undoubtedly found any porn you have in this house, including all the kinky stuff?”

“Er,” Sam said. “What kinky –?”

“Inside the ‘National Geographics’ and, unlike her, I wasn’t even looking very hard.”

“Oh God,” Sam said. “That isn’t–”

“Mm. So, with those premises accepted,” John said, “we might as well enjoy ourselves. Bring the tea. Not,” he explained, “for sexy reasons. I just like tea.”

He dropped his clothes into a pile on Sam’s bedroom floor. Sam shut the door behind himself a moment later. “I still don’t necessarily think this is a good idea,” he said, as he sat on the bed next to John.

“It is, trust me. It’s one of mine.”

“Well, that’s true. But there’s a difference between having your privacy invaded and _inviting –”_

 _“Sam,”_ John said firmly.

“Yes?”

“Please lubricate that toy for me.”

“This will break you,” Sam said in disbelief, but he did as he was told. Probably, John thought, because he was naked and on all fours, but perhaps it was simply that Sam just liked doing things for him. 

“Good. Now, push it in– slowl–– _oh._ Oh _god._ Sam.” 

The massive, slick length pulled out of him. He could hear Sam breathing heavily as the dildo thrust into him again. 

_“Fuck,”_ John said, his head hanging. 

“OK,” Sam said thickly, “I think I’m beginning to see the attraction.” He drew the dildo out again and pushed it back inside excruciatingly gently. “I don’t usually see you from this angle while we... while you’re so stretched. It’s really– fucking hot, baby –”

John laughed breathily. “Thank you –”

“And... there’s such control –” Sam continued. He pushed the dildo back in, all the way in so the shaft was buried deep inside and John’s nerve endings screamed. “I can go so slowly – That’s how you like it, isn’t it?”

“Your mouth as well,” John told him shakily. “That was the plan –”

“You want me, as well as this?”

“Yes, I want you ¬–”

“OK. You’re going to need to turn over,” Sam told him and John collapsed gratefully onto the bed. 

Lying on his back, with his cock trembling above him and an enormous toy in his arse, he felt briefly ridiculous and exposed. Then he realised Sam was looking at him with something akin to reverence. 

“You are so beautiful,” Sam murmured as he lowered his head. “I still can’t believe I get to do this to you.” He licked the tip of John’s cock and then slid his whole mouth down around it, stroking John’s hip with one hand and reaching down to where the dildo still protruded from John’s arse with the other. He worked it faster now, thrusting it in time with the bobbing of his head. Panting John tried to push upwards, to escape from the intense sensations of the dildo into the softer pleasures of Sam’s mouth, but Sam’s hand on his hip held him in place. It was too much, the heat gathering inside him relentlessly, and then his orgasm overtook him and he spilled into Sam’s mouth. 

Sam held him in place for a moment longer, so John could catch his breath, and then slowly let John’s cock out of his mouth and even more slowly pulled the toy out of him, watching its progress avidly. Even so, John gasped as the dildo slid over his hypersensitive skin, his chest heaved. 

Sam’s eyes flew up to his face. “Are you OK?” 

_“Fine,”_ John assured him, tugging him up the bed by his shirt collar. He breathed deeply. “Better than fine,” he added, smiling weakly. “How are you?”

“Gagging for it,” Sam admitted, pressing his erection up against John even as he pressed kisses into the side of his mouth. “God, I want you so bad.”

“Well, we’ll have to see what we can do about that,” John told him huskily. He unzipped Sam’s trousers with difficulty, as there wasn’t much room between them and his arms still felt like jelly, and wrapped a hand around his cock. “Is this OK?” he asked as Sam began to disrupt the rhythm of his hand by thrusting against him. 

“Yes,” Sam said, kissing him, “yes, yes, keep going.”

“It’s not too boring –”

“No –”

“– after what you did for me?”

“Baby, you know how good that was for me. This is just to finish me off. God, I’m so close, keep going, please –”

“Of course.”

“Yes, that’s it, that’s it,” Sam said, pressing his head into the crook of John’s neck, “that’s it– yes, that’s –” He shuddered against John as he came. 

John kissed him slowly, his hand still buried in Sam’s trousers, warm and wet with his semen, until finally it was grosser than it was sexy. He pulled his hand free and wiped it on the towel Sam had hung over the bed frame for just this purpose. 

“OK,” Sam said, as his breathing steadied and John settled back down against him, “so that’s one down. Four to go. Do you want to start now or take a short break? I vote that whatever happens you keep your clothes off. And maybe put on a collar. There was one in the bag, right?”

“I have to go home,” John told him regretfully as Sam kissed his eyelids. 

“No, you don’t.”

“I do,” John said, laughing, “I do. You know I do. My aunt’s in town, she’s calling on me at six –”

“Oh, _aunts,”_ Sam said, bundling him up in his arms. “That’s the trouble with aunts. They’re always dropping by. And since they’re always dropping by, you might as well see her any time as now, so just stay with me.”

“OK,” John said, sinking against him. “No, wait my aunt lives in Berkshire, not Berkeley. She’s only here for the week. She never calls round. I have to go.” 

“Stay for some tea first,” Sam suggested. 

“... Yes. All right,” John agreed.

“Yes.” Sam punched the air and pulled the teapot towards him. “I know all your weaknesses. You’re helpless before me.” John leant against him and Sam wrapped an arm around him, before realising that he couldn’t pour the tea one-handed and releasing him. John watched him thoughtfully.

Lydia’s assumption that Sam was already in love with him was based on nothing substantial. John had read the same book she had, and was sure he would have noticed anything if there was anything to notice. Nevertheless, John thought, she was probably right. Not that it mattered, in a way. All the others had adored him at the start. 

“OK,” Sam said, holding out a cup to him. “Now, you may not know this, but we’re embracing other cultures this week at Berkeley.’

“No, we didn’t get the memo in my department.”

“Very careless. I’ll fire the couriers later. Anyway, so, today is Japanese day,” Sam said very seriously.

“Is it?”

“Yes. Don’t laugh –”

“Why would I be laughing?” 

“Good – it’s very important to respect other cultures. So, today is Japanese day and, as you know, Japanese tea ceremonies can last up to four hours –”

“Or as little as thirty minutes.”

“Spoilsport,” Sam said.

“Mm,” John agreed, kissing him. “And, while we’re on the subject, don’t think I didn’t notice that you’ve tried to call me ‘baby’ twice today. It’s becoming a serious cause for concern.”

“I’m weaning you onto it,” Sam told him. “In five years time, you’ll be over the indignity and you’ll love it. Trust me. It’s like the sex toy thing, which I now accept you were totally right about.”

“Five years?” John repeated.

“OK, ten years.” 

_Ten years,_ John thought, sipping his tea. _Sam still expects us to be together in ten years._

He didn’t want to break up with Sam and had no plans to do so in the near future, but that was the near future. Who knew what would happen in ten years? All one could go on was probability, and the laws of probability stated that it was highly unlikely that a relationship currently only three-months old would endure for ten years, however well it was working now. 

John was honest enough with himself that he knew that when it did end it was likely to be his fault. Something he said or did would be so awful or so cumulatively awful that Sam would break it off. Almost all of his previous partners had left him, rather than the other way around, although he had, admittedly, always been somewhat relieved and ready to move on when it happened. 

Would he be relieved when Sam left him, he wondered, and his heart contracted painfully in a way that said, _No, not yet. Not him._

When he looked down at his teacup again he found Sam had re-filled it while he’d been preoccupied, and was now waiting for him to notice while pretending to smooth the pillows.

“You are so ridiculous,” John told him, laughing, “I love you.”

Sam, who’d been grinning as soon as he’d been caught, was suddenly serious. “Do you mean that?” 

It had been an accident, but– 

“Yes,” John said, surprising himself. 

“Yes to me being ridiculous, or yes to the other thing?”

John smiled. “Either,” he said. _“Both,”_ he said into Sam’s mouth as Sam kissed him. “I love you. I know it’s far too early to say something that serious– I usually leave it at least a decade,” he continued as Sam kissed his throat. “You don’t have to say it back until you want to, if you want to.”

Sam stopped kissing him. “Are you crazy? I completely adore, worship, desire– Jesus, I should have worked on this earlier, but I didn’t think you were going to spring it on me. I love you so much,” Sam told him. “So much. Will that do for now? I’ll think of something better later.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I want to.”

“OK,” John told him. He smiled into another kiss.

“Are you still going to see your aunt?” Sam asked.

“Of course,” John said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Sam sighed. “Well, you can tell her she’s off my Christmas list.”

*

Mary Shelley stared at John. “You said _what?_ Sorry, got my emphasis wrong there. _You_ said what? _You_ did?”

“I know,” John told her, grinning up from his chair at the foot of the lecture theatre. “I’m quite surprised myself.

“Where you high?” Mary asked.

“No,” John said. “Slightly drunk – Sam’s mother had been plying me with champagne since nine thirty in the morning, but I think it had largely worn off by that point.”

 _“Hmm,”_ Mary said. 

At the back of the hall, the most punctual of John’s students had begun trickling in. The background noise began to rise exponentially. 

“You’re very looking thoughtful, Mary,” John observed.

“Well, this is a very important moment.”

“I’m touched.”

“What by?” Mary said. “Oh, you mean it’s an important moment for _you._ No, I was thinking that the projector in my favourite lecture theatre has been broken for weeks. Sam’s notoriously tight with the budget, but if I can catch him in a good mood... Yes, that might work. Right, well, I’ve got to go.” 

John waved her off. 

“See you later,” Mary called, as she traipsed up the stairs, “when we can talk about the terrifying possibility that you’ll have to marry him now.”

John shrugged. “Been there, done that. It wasn’t that bad in the end.”

“For more than a week.”

“Do they do marriages that last for more than a week?”

“You’d have to ask someone else,” Mary called back. 

“Oh, ask me,” Liz said, passing Mary as she came down to sit at the front. “What are we talking about? Electromagnetism again?”

“Marriage,” John told her. 

“Oh. I think it’s really good,” Liz said, pulling books out of her bag. “If you love the person with all your heart. Otherwise it can be awful. You read these terrible stories, don’t you, about how the divorce rate is climbing every year. I think too many people just rush into these things.”

“I’m not seriously considering it, so don’t worry,” John told her. “How was your date?”

“Very nice, but probably not going to lead to marriage.”

“Oh dear. And what does Joe say about that?”

“Oh! That was what I was going to tell you. We broke up last week –”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, no, don’t be¬¬,” Liz said brightly. “It was the right thing to do and we’re still friends.”

“Hi Professor Smith¬. Good weekend?”

“Clearly,” John said as Joe Grant took the seat next to Liz. “And yes, thank you. It was.”

“I’m sorry?” Joe said, looking up from his bag. “I think I missed a bit of that.” 

“We were just talking about you,” John explained. 

“Well, about us, really,” Liz explained, “and how there isn’t an us any more.”

“You didn’t tell him why, did you?” Joe said, looking suddenly very white in the face.

“No, but I think you should. John’s very good to talk to –” 

“Let me guess,” John said, leaning forward. “Are you gay?”

 _“John!”_ Liz thwacked him with her notebook. 

“It’s OK if you are. My boyfriend is.”

“That’s not very tactful. Do it better, or I’ll take you off this assignment.”

“Hey, John!” Dylan, one of his other students called from across the hall. “Guess what I got from my parents this weekend.” He was holding up something small and expensive looking.

“Excuse me,” John told Liz and Joe. He bounded across the lecture hall and accepted the proffered device. “A PalmPilot, very nice. How are you finding it? Has it revolutionised your life already?” 

“Totally.” 

John began pressing buttons as Dylan expounded on the many ways the PalmPilot had helped him do everything he’d done previously, but better. 

“Look, there’s today’s class in your date planner!” John observed. “This is so exciting.”

“Yeah, I programmed all my lectures in.”

“Let me see that,” the girl who was sitting next to Dylan said. “Huh,” she said, leaning across John. “That’s funny, professor. It looks like the programmed-in lecture started ten minutes ago.”

“I’m very sorry, Clarissa. You’re absolutely right,” John said, handing the PalmPilot back to Dylan. “It’s a very nice thing, though. Thank you for showing it to me, Dylan. I’ll have to try and convince my boyfriend that he needs one, so I can steal it from him.”

“Oh, so that’s official now, is it?” Clarissa asked. “Congratulations.”

“Yes, I met his mother at the – ah, that’s who needs a PalmPilot in their life – weekend. Hmm, if I call her today, I’m sure I could have it by¬¬ –”

“Remember, the lecture,” Clarissa said warningly.

“You have so little faith in me,” John said, wounded. He jogged down to the front of the lecture hall. “All right, children, settle down. Today we’re going to talk about ¬–?”

“Wave functions!” someone yelled from the back. 

“The Big Bang!”

“David Hilbert!” 

John waved this away.

“Whatever’s on the syllabus,” Clarissa shouted.

“Thermodynamics!”

“Magnetic Resonance!”

“Yes!” John said. “I like that one. OK –” 

He gave a brilliant, involved and largely improvised lecture on magnetic resonance imaging. Sam slipped into the back of the hall five minutes from the end and, without really being able to stop himself, John began to add more rhetorical flourishes to his conclusions. 

At last the PalmPilot beeped to let him know that the lecture had ended it was time for Dylan, at least, to do something else. 

“Do some reading on whatever seems most interesting,” John called as people began to pack up. “And remember you’re always welcome to drop round, though I’m out as often as I’m in at the moment. As it were.”

He collected his laptop from the front and began to push up the stairs through the throngs of students. Joe Grant made some awkward motions towards conversation that John suspected were heavily motivated by his ex-girlfriend, but John could hardly hear him over the chatter of conversation around him. 

“Come and talk to me later,” he shouted and Joe nodded, as though he’d been expecting to be brushed aside and was resigned to it. “I’m at home tonight,” John told him firmly. “Come round tonight.”

“All right.”

“Good man.” 

At the top of the stairs John met Sam who gestured to him that they should break away from the pack and split off towards John’s office. 

“I come bearing lunch,” he explained. 

John was very fond of his office for all that it was relatively small and smelled of damp paper. Somehow he’d managed to acquire several hundred books since his arrival in the country and they were crammed into every crevice the university had provided, stacked up under the windowsill and around the door, interspersed with various clocks that ticked at odds with one another. John had spent a day arranging it with some of Tony’s smallest cousins. Now it looked the way he thought an academic office should look, complete with a desk full of pigeonholes and two chairs, one of which was much better than the other. 

When Sam pushed him up against the inside door several books fell down around them like bulky confetti. Their kisses were slow and leisurely, as was the hand Sam inserted into John’s trousers. _This is nice,_ John though as his orgasm spread through him warmly. _I could definitely get used to this._

“So, did you have a nice evening without me?” Sam asked, as they sat together eating sandwiches. John, having refused the nice chair on a whim, was now sitting on the floor. 

“I did, thank you. And thank you for lending me the car. It made traversing the city in search of a restaurant Aunt Flora was willing to consider eating in much easier.”

“I didn’t see it in the car park this morning.”

“No, you’ll have to come over later to pick it up.”

“You’re holding my car to hostage?”

John grinned. “Possibly.”

“Not bad. It’s kind of a shame it’s not going to work. I have city council tonight.”

“That’s very convenient. I happen to live in the city.”

“Since you left my car outside the opera house, there’s actually not reason for me to come back to what I generously call your house.”

“It doesn’t sound very generous to me. You know what would be generous? Castle. Palace. Palladium. Mind you, they do say a man’s home¬ –”

“I don’t think they’ve seen your bathroom.”

“You may be right,” John said. “So, when shall I tell the butler to expect you?”

“About nine,” Sam said, leaning down and kissing him. “After the meeting.”

“Come over beforehand as well,” John murmured. “Then we can talk about what you’re voting on before you make any rash decisions.”

“I can’t come over before nine,” Sam said, “but I’m voting on the side of good, I promise. And I’m not ready to re-launch the housing thing yet, so you don’t need worry about that either.” 

The ‘housing thing’ was one of his former pet projects within the city. Sam had been proud enough of his plans to completely revolutionise the housing situation in downtown San Francisco to tell John all about them. In five or six years, he maintained, things would be a lot better for everyone, but, in the here and now, Sam had been forced to shut down various bids for restoration projects proposed by other council members and divert funds from a school that had been performing poorly anyway. It had closed a few months later, which Sam considered a relief, but which had undoubtedly meant large class sizes all round and long and difficult commutes for children who might not have parents to escort them to their new school. Sam had also scheduled the total destruction of a small out of the way neighbourhood in about six months’ time to clear space for his newer, better homes. 

John had let him explain all of this, even encouraging him to elaborate on various points, before asking whether Sam was completely insane. They’d then had a long argument that had culminated in John calling a taxi to take Sam out to the neighbourhood in question. They’d spent the evening knocking on doors and trying to talk to the people living behind them. Nobody had been very pleased to see Sam and it had been exhausting and upsetting for everyone involved. 

Sam was now, apparently, working on re-designing his project entirely, while pushing various educational goals within the community. Apparently. He was now a lot less forthcoming about what he did at council meetings and often forgot to mention when they were happening.

“So tonight you’ll be supporting the underdog, finding out what people really think, being generally honourable and righteous?” John asked. “You know, that sort of thing.”

“Yes, dear.”

“If you’re not, I’d prefer it if you didn’t come round after all.”

“I said yes,” Sam said. “Though, frankly, even if I wasn’t it’s against the law to try and influence my decisions.”

John scrutinised him. Eventually he said, “I don’t like to call it influencing.” 

“Really,” Sam said, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. 

“ _Inspiring_ sounds better, don’t you think?” John said, and leaned up to kiss Sam. “Thank you for changing your mind about the housing project,” he said seriously, his forehead still resting against Sam’s. “I know it was important to you.”

“It’s more important to get it right,” Sam said and John smiled widely enough that he hoped it was obvious how much he loved Sam at this moment. So many local politicians would have been content to do nothing much at all. 

“So you’re coming over at nine?”

“After the meeting.”

“All right,” John said. This time the kiss lasted longer. Sam’s cradled John’s face in his hands. “Incidentally,” John murmured in the same tone, “have you ever considered how useful you’d find a PalmPilot in organising your meetings?”

“You know what? I haven’t,” Sam said. 

“It would be very good for taking minutes.”

“I’d love to get it for you, baby, but you really don’t want a PalmPilot,” Sam told him. 

“Not for me. Sam, this is an entirely selfless suggestion. And I don’t want you to buy me things. We’ve talked about this before.”

“Uh huh,” Sam said. 

“I genuinely think it would be useful.”

“Forget it. You’d throw it against the wall after a week of it telling you what to do all the time.”

“I suppose you’re right,” John said, dispirited. “But,” he said, perking up, “it learns how to read your handwriting. Don’t you think that’s incredible? By which I mean, obviously, very useful in city management and novel writing.”

“I can read my own handwriting, thanks,” Sam said. “And I don’t think any machine is going to be able to read yours unless you start writing all the letters in.”

“What do you mean, all the letters? I write all the letters.” 

“Really? What’s this say?” Sam said, picking up the top page in a stack of notes John had made last week _on_... 

John squinted at the words in the top row, and then at the ones in the next row down. There was an ‘S’ in there somewhere, and a ‘W’ a bit further along... between some squiggles...

“All right,” he said. “I retract my last statement. And any and all present and future bids to get you to purchase the device in question, which is clearly a waste of money.”

“You know that was pathetic,” Sam said, grinning.

“Yes,” John admitted. 

“You know I love you,” Sam said, sliding off the chair onto the floor. 

John grinned and drew him backwards. “Yes.”

“OK,” Sam said, kissing him. “Good.”

*

John got a lift back with Mary, as he usually did. Despite what she’d threatened earlier, they didn’t talk about Sam for longer than it took for Mary to transition onto the Victorians (about ten minutes), and from there to Dickens, whom she had a crush on, despite his appalling treatment of his family. 

Joe Grant was waiting awkwardly outside John’s house. He waved as they pulled up, looking incredibly out of place lingering in the streets of Chinatown. Behind him and behind a pane of glass, Billy mimicked his wave from on top of a washing machine. 

“One of yours?” Mary asked.

“Yes. He has an as yet undisclosed problem.”

“Don’t they all?” Mary said wryly as he opened the door and got out. “See you tomorrow.”

“Good evening, professor,” Joe said, following John up to the entrance of the laundrette. 

“Good evening, Joe,” John said. “You know, this isn’t locked,” he said, pushing the door open. He waggled it about to emphasise his point. The little bell jangled annoyingly and from inside the laundrette Tony yelled, 

_“Stop fucking doing that!”_

“Despite appearances, they actually encourage people to come in.”

“I didn’t want to intrude.”

“How long have you been here?”

“An hour,” Tony supplied. “We tried to get him to come inside and play something, but he was having none of it.”

“I find the smell of chemicals overpowering and I don’t like gambling,” Joe said in a tone that said John should leave the matter alone now. 

“Well, we can talk outside, if you like,” John said. He tuned back to the windowed-front of the laundry. “Billy, would you mind making me some–?” 

He broke off because it had occurred to him that he was looking out of the front of the laundrette and Sam’s car was not there. In a way, it wasn’t supposed to be. Sam had been quite specific about where the car should be left. Campaigner on the side of goodness or not, he didn’t actually trust the people he was trying to help or want them anywhere near his car. Before giving John the keys, he’d made him promise to leave the BMW outside the opera house, rather than outside the laundrette. 

John had forgotten this promise by eleven in the evening. Then he’d remembered it, but only once he was upstairs and had already taken off his shoes. After some consideration, he’d pushed notes under Tony and Billy’s doors asking them not to nick it and gone to bed. The car had still been there the next morning and Billy had even offered to put a shine on it in the afternoon, provided he didn’t have anything else to do. 

Now, however, the car was definitely not there. 

“Tea, right?” Billy said. “Professor?”

“No, not at the moment,” John said. “Has Sam been round to collect his car?” 

“Who?”

“Sam. My Sam. Has he been here and taken the car?” 

“What, the car’s gone?”

“It hasn’t,” Tony said, getting up and looking out the window as though John wasn’t capable of establishing that the car was gone. “OK, no, it has.”

John huffed in frustration. That left only three options and all of them were various levels of very bad. “I assume this means you haven’t moved it.”

“Why would I?”

“You’d better be telling me the truth, Anthony Silverstein, because if I find you’re not ¬–”

“Hey, calm down,” Tony said, holding up his hands. “You said not to, and that’s not our thing, anyway, is it?”

“Car jacking – it’s just so... tacky,” Billy agreed. 

John paced. “You do know people who don’t share your delicate sensibilities, though, who wouldn’t think twice about stealing anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor, and only barely twice if it was.”

“Well,” Tony said delicately, “I don’t know about that –”

Why did none of them get it? Perhaps they thought all that had happened was that a rich man had lost something he could easily replace, but John could see the chain of consequences stretching before him. Sam was powerful. He could easily bring the power of the city down on the people in this room and on the rest of Chinatown, if he wanted to. The crime rate was a problem and, now it had directly affected him, it would be time to take action. Of course John would argue against anything too rash, but he had managed to lose his credit along with the car in an act of monumental stupidity and carelessness. 

_“Tony¬¬,”_ John said firmly, “you have to tell me now.”

“Yes, we know some people like that,” Billy said. “If I give a few people a call and offer them some stuff, they might bring it back if it was them.”

“Good,” John said. He rubbed his face. “Please do that. Thank you. I’ll ring Mr Glitz and see if he’s been asked to do this on Sam’s behalf –”

“Are we talking about a large, blue car?” Joe asked, and John realised that he’d forgotten his student was still here, sitting patiently on a bench in front of the window. “Because if it was,” Joe said, “I saw the men who took it. There were two of them, both tall, Caucasian, one had brown hair and the other one had a large hat. I don’t know what colour his hair was.”

“Stupid fucks,” Tony said. “Didn’t they see you watching?”

“You know these men, then?” John asked.

“Yeah, I know them,” Tony said. “Greg? Ring Phelps and tell him to bring the fucking car back.”

“I’m sorry, professor,” Joe said. “I would have stopped them, but I didn’t see them arrive so I thought it must be their car¬¬.”

“No, it’s all right,” John told him. “And, in the future, don’t even think about taking on any hardened criminals on your own, even if you know for certain that they’re leaving in a vehicle they didn’t pay for.”

“No one’s answering,” Greg called from the back. “I’ll keep ringing, but I’m guessing they don’t want to talk to me.”

“Right,” John said briskly, “if someone can give me their address, I’m off to go and take on some hardened criminals. If Sam calls, don’t tell him where I am.”

“On your own?” Joe asked.

“Yes.”

“But you just said –”

“Joe, there’s an old saying that I think applies here.”

Joe sighed. “Do as I say, not as I do, right?”

“No,” John said. “It’s – Are you completely insane? I think, in this case, the answer is yes. But I also really want that car back.” 

“I’ll come with you then,” Joe told him, getting to his feet. “You need some kind of back up.”

“Thank you, but that won’t be –”

“Yeah, me too,” Billy said, slipping off the washing machine. He clapped John on the back. “Come on, Professor. Let’s go.”

Phelps’ place wasn’t far away according to Billy and they could walk there in five minutes. Of course, the car wouldn’t necessarily be there when they arrived. Phelps (the one with the hat) and his friend, Burke, might have gone on a joy ride or taken Sam’s car off somewhere to help with some other, bigger job, but Billy was convinced that the BMW was too nice for that. They’d be changing the plates and looking to sell it on to someone out of town. John tried to accept this explanation, but his mind was already working on other plans for other eventualities. 

He had four by the time they arrived. The house was small and dirty and there was no BMW parked in front of it. There was, however, what looked like a line of garages down the side. 

“If they didn’t answer the phone, they might not answer the door either,” Joe observed.

“Don’t be stupid,” Billy said in a low hiss. “We’re not going to knock. I thought you were a student of something.”

“Astrophysics,” John supplied, “and– Joe, what’s your minor?”

“Well, it’s obviously not common sense, is it?” Billy said.

“So, what are we going to do?” Joe said, lowering his voice to the same level as the others’.

“Steal it back, of course,” John told him. “Come on. Billy and I will open the doors. Joe, you keep a look out for anyone who might prefer us not to do that.” 

“What do I do if I do see someone?” 

John and Billy looked at each other. “Run,” John suggested. 

“Run screaming,” Billy said. “That way we’ll know to run, too.” He split off towards the first of the garage doors. 

“Helpful,” Joe said. “Thanks.”

“Probably best if you don’t tell anyone at Berkeley about this,” John said, with a rare flash of job-preservation instinct.

“No kidding,” Joe said wryly. He backed towards the wall and stared around at the streets. 

Billy had already got the first garage door open and was hauling it upwards. It made a horrible rattling sound that seemed to echo for miles. 

“Not this one,” he hissed, pulling it down again. 

John turned to the next door along. The lock looked slightly more complicated than he’d expected, but didn’t pose any real obstacle. Several of John’s key rings were actually lock-picking devices of various levels of sophistication. If asked, he would have said he didn’t make a habit of breaking and entering. The truth was that he did, but that he didn’t make a habit of stealing anything once he was inside, which he’d long ago decided made it OK. 

The door slid up with the same terrible sound as before and John ducked underneath it. Inside the garage lurked half a dozen bicycles, two motorbikes and a scooter. The back wall was piled with paint cans. For a brief, mad moment John considered pushing the bikes out into the street and calling _‘You’re free! Get out of here!’_ after them as they trundled into the night. 

He pulled down the door and jogged over to the next unopened garage. Before he could pull the door up, though, there came the roar of a powerful car and the glare of headlights from the other end of the driveway. 

John flattened himself against the line of garages. The men driving Sam’s car had stopped right at the entrance of the alleyway where they couldn’t see him yet. Billy edged down until he was pressed against John’s side. 

_“Shit,”_ he observed. 

John nodded. Slowly he slid his left hand into the pocket containing Sam’s car keys. 

Faintly there was the sound of someone tapping on glass. The car’s engine noise stopped, the front doors both opened, and two men, one of whom was wearing a large hat, got out. 

“Can we help you?” the one in the hat said, with threatening politeness.

“I don’t think this is your car,” Joe told him. “I’d like you to give it back, please.”

“Has he got a death wish?” Billy hissed, but he followed John’s low run towards the open car. The lit interior blazed warmly across the concrete.

“Oh, you would, would you?” one of the men said.

Joe backed away down the driveway. He could see them converging on the car, John realised, and was making sure they had enough room to pull out without hurting anyone. Clever boy. 

John slid into the driver’s seat, twisting the key in the ignition and kicking out at the car alarm sensor on his side as Billy got in the other side and slammed the door. There was an almighty wailing over the sound of the car roaring to life. The men converging on Joe turned in time to see the BMW racing towards them and Joe began to run down the street. Billy leaned over and released the back door on the driver’s side. 

“Get in,” he shouted and Joe hurled himself into the back, slamming the door behind him. 

By this time John was laughing over the sound of the siren, the danger heroically averted. 

“Take the wheel,” he told Billy, who shouted, _“I don’t think this is very safe!”_ over his head as John bent down to re-wire the alarm in his door. At last the alarm stopped. John sat up and, half deafened but in good spirits, drove them back to the laundrette. 

“Well done, gentleman,” John declared as Billy got out. “A successful night’s work.” He twisted round in his seat to look at Joe. “I’m afraid can’t drop you off anywhere special. This car turns into a pumpkin if it’s not back in an affluent area by eight forty five.”

“That’s fine,” Joe said. “You can drop me off anywhere.” 

“Opera house it is, then,” John said and swung the car back out of the drive. 

“Now I think of it,” he said thoughtfully, as they drove along, “if this really were a magical transforming car, it would have almost been worth leaving it in the hands of the dastardly thieves just to imagine their surprise.”

Joe was silent. John glanced up at his face in the rear view mirror and found that Joe was pale and worn-looking. 

“You’ll be getting extra credit for this,” he commented in an attempt to raise the mood. “A lot of extra credit, so there’s no need to worry if you’re going to pass my course. Essentially, you are.”

“It’s not yours I’m worried about,” Joe said hollowly. “It’s all the others.”

“You’re not serious,” John said. He pulled into the performing arts garage. “You’re bright, you’re hardworking¬– you can’t be falling behind anywhere else.”

_“Not yet.”_

“You’re really worried about this,” John said with realisation, his eyes flicking back up to the mirror. Joe was holding his face in his hands, which were trembling suddenly. “All right, Joe. Just let me park and we’ll talk about this” 

He switched the car off and turned in his seat. The car seemed very quiet now. He could hear Joe’s breathing. 

“You did well last year and the year before,” he told Joe. “I know. I’ve seen the records.” In fact, he’d broken into the university system early into his first semester at Berkeley and had seen everyone’s records. Joe’s had stood out among them as being nearly perfect in every subject. “I really don’t think you have anything to worry about.” 

“How do you think I did that?” Joe asked. “I worked, professor. Every hour of every day of every term and I got the kind of grades people expected me to get. This year– I don’t know, it’s all gone wrong. I¬– I wanted to go out with Liz, because– well, it doesn’t matter, but she wanted to see me two, three times a week. And my parents started paying for me to take violin lessons, even though I don’t want violin lessons. And I already work three days a week to try and pay for my apartment. And then you wanted me to join the cricket team and to help you with the fireworks, and we can just write off tonight, obviously, although I was supposed to get at least a thousand words of Professor Gardner’s paper done. And my apartment’s always so dirty and no one else cleans it up –”

“And you’re overwhelmed,” John said, kindly. “I understand.” 

“No, you don’t,” Joe said. “Of course you don’t. You’ve never been overwhelmed in your life.”

“That’s just how I make it look,” John said. “The truth¬ –”

“You didn’t even turn up to most of your exams, did you?” Joe continued, overriding him. “But it was all right because you were so clever you passed anyway, and now people just hand you lucrative postings around the world wherever you want to go. And you don’t need to worry about money and I bet you already know how to play the violin. But not all of us are mad geniuses, Professor Smith. It’s just you. So I don’t know why you think you can help anyone with their actual problems.”

“I do admittedly know how to play the violin,” John began, and instantly knew that, of the many possible openings he could have gone with, this was not one of the better options. His conclusion was supported by Joe opening his door and getting out of the car. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” John shouted after him, as he tried to escape from his seatbelt. “Joe!” 

He opened the door and almost walked into Sam, who said, “I thought I was going to come to you.”

“Back in a moment,” John told him, rushing past. 

“OK,” Sam said. “By the way, we won,” he called after John’s departing figure. 

“That’s great,” John shouted back. “Joe! Wait.” He caught up with the young man just outside the car park.

“What?” Joe demanded. 

“You didn’t give me much time to think,” John told him. “You’ve been stewing over these problems for months, I assume, and you gave me five seconds. Even for a genius, that’s rather short notice. Now I’ve had thirty seconds and I’m ready to venture some opinions if you’re willing to listen to them.” 

“Actually,” Joe said, “I really just want to get back and start on my paper.” 

“Excellent,” John said. “So, the main problem seems to be time. Once you have more time, it should be easier to arrange everything else. Obviously you need to quit your job. Or jobs –”

“Great advice, but I need to eat –”

“Do you want to stop playing cricket?”

“No,” Joe said, “but I need to keep working if I want –”

“I’ve been thinking about starting a team for younger players from the area,” John continued. “But even I haven’t got all the time in the world, however it might look. So I’ve been thinking about asking someone like you to run such a team on my behalf. You’re good with people, you’re sensible– frankly, you’re a better choice than I am. It would only be a few hours a week, and I would pay you for your time. Enough, I think, that you could get by without working anywhere else, particularly if you leave your current violin teacher, who is undoubtedly charging your for their services, and come and practise with me a few times a week– That also saves you any time you might otherwise have spent travelling. My office is very conveniently located just down the hall from most of your lectures.”

“That’s nice of you, but I don’t want –”

“It’s _not_ charity,” John said firmly. “I already practice regularly, or rather I don’t, but I should do. And I have, I promise, been thinking about a junior cricket team for a while now. You would be doing me a favour. Two favours. Your dirty flat I can’t help with. I’d almost certainly make it worse if I went anywhere near it. So, do we have a deal?”

“...I don’t know,” Joe said. “I have to think about it, talk to my parents...”

“Naturally,” John said, as Sam’s car pulled up alongside him. “Take as much time as you need. In fact, take this Wednesday off cricket so you can do the paper you were doing tonight–” As usual, he tried to open the driver’s door and had to be waved round to the other side. “I’ll see you on Monday,” John called. “Bring your violin.” 

He shut the door and leaned into Sam’s kiss. He waved at Joe as they passed, but the young man seemed not to have noticed. 

“Successful evening?” Sam asked. 

“Yes,” John said. “Though I think I may just have offered to pay someone several hundred dollars a week to do my job for me.” 

“Sounds like a great deal, if you ask me,” Sam said. “Can you set me up with something like that?” 

“You choose to work,” John reminded him, grinning. 

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Sam said. “I have no idea why, though. I could be living the life of the idle rich _right now.”_

“You wouldn’t have met me,” John pointed out.

“Well, that’s true. I guess there’s something to this work thing after all.”

“Something like... self-respect, and the accumulation and impartation of knowledge, the creation of new ways of thinking and new stories that profoundly affect people, and the ability to make a difference in the lives of your students and the entire city.” 

Sam raised an eyebrow as John finished his list. John grinned and, since they had already stopped at the traffic lights, leaned over and kissed him again. It was very easy to kiss Sam. “I like what you do,” he admitted. “Particularly since you don’t have to do any of it.”

“I like you,” Sam said, smiling back.

“Not what I do.”

Sam shrugged as he put the car into gear again. “To be honest, I could live without it. You... what? Blow things up all the time? Anyone could do that,” John shoved him as Sam began to grin, “though I guess it’s lucky they don’t – you know, I am driving here,” he pointed out as his shoulder moved closer and closer to the window, “this really isn’t safe. And I don’t know why you’re getting so mad. I’m just saying if you wanted to give up the day job and spend your time lounging around naked and covered in oil, I would be OK with that.”

“Thanks,” John said, releasing him. He turned to watch street lamps whiz past outside the windows. 

“Just to make sure – you know I don’t mean that, right?” Sam said, eyes flicking right towards him.

“I know.”

“I love how clever and inventive and important to the future of everything you are.”

John grinned. “I know.”

“And I really would be genuinely disappointed if you gave up building things and teaching and blowing things up just to be my oiled sex slave, but, if that’s what you wanted, then I would support you. Maybe, we should compromise, and you can just do it on weekends. What day is it today?”

“Monday.”

“Shit. OK, what if I abandoned my oil-related principles for tonight?”

“I’m afraid you might have to,” John told him. “I was distracted earlier, but I think I heard something about a recent meeting going well for you.”

“Ah, and you find that of interest, do you?”

“I do, yes. If you were to spend the rest of the journey home telling me about how the meeting went, with particular reference to your own personal cleverness, I think I’d find it difficult not to start rubbing oil into my skin as soon as I was inside and undressed. Assuming you allowed that, of course.”

Sam laughed. “Deal,” he said. “Though I get to do the rubbing.”

*

It was Saturday morning and _Vissi d’arte_ was playing in John’s room – a rich, soaring, sorrowful sound that enveloped him and distracted him from the marking he was supposedly engaged in. The noise of the door opening barely registered and so he only jumped when Sam turned off the CD player. 

“Six phones,” Sam said, picking up the nearest of John’s mobiles, which was on top of the chest-of-drawers and dropping it onto the desk. “ _Five_ cell phones and a landline, and you don’t answer any of them.” He found another one on the bed and threw it over to John as he sat down. “What is the point?” 

“They’re useful for ringing other people?” John suggested. “And you can play games on them. Hold on–” With the volume substantially lower than before, he turned the CD back on. The phone in his hand showed two missed calls from Sam. “Did you want to talk to me about anything specific?” 

“Yeah,” Sam said, running a hand through his hair. “I cancelled my residents’ meeting, so I thought I’d drop round an hour earlier than planned if you weren’t busy.”

John swivelled his chair away from his marking. “I’m not particularly.”

“Great. That’s perfect, but it was difficult to tell without anything to go on. You’re usually busy if you don’t answer, but then again I always wonder if you might not be answering because you’re dead.”

“I’m not dead,” John told him. “As far as I know, anyway.”

“Or trapped under anything heavy,” Sam said, “but it was a close call, so I thought I’d stop by. And rescue you if you needed rescuing, or distract you if you were busy.” 

“That’s very sweet,” John said, wheeling the chair over to where Sam sat on the bed, “but also proof that you didn’t need to ring at all, since either alternative produced the same result.”

“That’s true,” Sam admitted, kissing him. “I just like talking to you.” John smiled and leant in him again. “And I still don’t understand why you didn’t answer the landline, at least,” Sam said, inches from his face. “I mean, the answer phone plays right into the room. It’s really loud and annoying. I know – I’ve been here when your mom calls.” 

“Yet another reason my home is consistently voted one of the top places to stay in the San Francisco area,” John said. “I’m sorry, I was swept up in,” he gestured into the Tosca-filled air, “my marking.”

“Uh huh,” Sam said, leaning over to the answer machine on the windowsill. “I do believe you, but I want you to listen to this as penance anyway. I must have called about six or seven times.”

“You have– _six-teen_ messages,” the answer machine said crisply. 

“Not all of those are me,” Sam protested as John grinned. He loved how much Sam liked him, but it was still worth puncturing the more ridiculous moments of emotional excess with mockery.

“Uh huh,” he said moving from the chair to straddle Sam’s lap. He stroked Sam’s face, “I believe you,” and lowered his head to kiss him. 

“Hello Theo,” the machine said in his mother’s voice. “This is your mother –”

“I really do believe you,” John said, as Sam skipped onto the next message with one hand while the other tangled in John’s hair. 

“Theo? I know you’re –” A beep as the machine moved onto the next message. Sam had found a sensitive spot under John’s jaw line to suck on and John was keening slightly against him as he tried to undo Sam’s shirt buttons. 

“Hi John, this is –”

“Doctor Smith, this is your –”

“Theo, darling, it’s me again –”

“Hey Professor –”

“Darling! I’m inconsolable without you. You simply must –”

“Why is _my_ mother calling you?” Sam asked as he skipped quickly over some messages from the electrical company and one of John’s angry colleagues.

“Well, she’s clearly inconsolable without me. It must be a family trait.” They were down on the bed now, Sam having pulled him gently backwards at some point. 

“Hi John! I’m in the area –”

“This is an automated –”

“Hey baby,” the answer machine said at last in Sam’s warm, round tones. “Listen, I cancelled my residents’ meeting today – someone finally showed me the agenda and it was a waste of time – so I’m free now, rather than in a few hours time. I could come over, if you’re around – we could hang out before dinner, I got some movies from the rental place that I think you’ll like. Or I could come over and we could – _not_ hang out... Anyway, you’re clearly not here so I don’t know why I’m leaving this message. I love you. Bye.”

“What movies?” 

“Shit like the Usual Suspects– I’ll show you later,” Sam said as the answering machine beeped and continued in his voice.

“Hey baby. Are you there? ... Hello, John? Baby? I’ve called you a few times on your other phones and still no answer. You haven’t gone to New York again, have you? If you haven’t yet, but you’re planning it, remember we have dinner reservations at eight. I’d really like to see you before that, though, if possible– Well, I really want to see you all the time and I haven’t seen you since yesterday, so this is basically torture. Please pick up the phone... John? ... OK, you’re not there. I’ll try a different phone. Bye.” The machine beeped.

“John?” Sam’s voice said. “I just called your friend from downstairs in the hope that he could check you weren’t dead or something. He’s out, but apparently you were upstairs playing loud music when he left about twenty minutes ago. So, I’m pretty sure you’re home and you just need to _pick up the phone._ Pick. Up. The. Phone. For me. Come on, baby. You can do it... I know you’re there, listening to me right now... If you are there, you should know I’ve spent the last ten minutes thinking about you and how I want to get my dick inside you as soon as possible...”

John’s hips gave an involuntary spasm of arousal, pressing his erection more firmly into the palm of Sam’s hand. He’d been finding the measured sound of Sam’s voice already a good addition to being licked and caressed in real life, and now he was talking about sex.

“I think I see a plan emerging,” he said, close up against Sam’s ear. 

“Do you?”

“Mm.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” John murmured into Sam’s mouth, kissing him as Sam’s slick fingers began circling his anus and Sam’s voice on the answer phone said –

“– I’ll open you up really slowly, though, I promise, no matter how much I want you – two, three fingers, really slow... unless you want that toy. The only problem is I’d have to go home to get it first and I really don’t want to wait, baby. So not the toy, but you look so fucking beautiful like that, John – so... vulnerable and lovely. I was thinking today actually that one day I’ll be able to get my whole fist inside you¬ –”

 _“Fuck,”_ John hissed, pushing back on what was, in fact, only two of Sam’s fingers. 

The Sam on the phone seemed to realise he’d reached a crisis point here, and said hurriedly –

“Right. OK, I’m just going to drive over. See you soon. I’ll call again from the car –” The machine beeped. 

“Hi... Professor Smith,” said another voice. 

“Fuck’s _sake,”_ Sam said releasing his grip on John’s cock in an attempt to locate the skip button again. 

“I just wanted you to know that I’ve thought about what you said,” the answering machine continued, over the sound of blustery wind. “You made it sound so easy, and I’m sure it would be for you –”

 _“Leave it,”_ John said firmly as Sam located the machine. He pushed Sam’s hand out of him.

_“Baby –”_

“I said _leave it.”_

“– but you don’t have my parents. They’re not going to let me give up my job and they’d freak out if they thought I might be falling behind. And if they knew I was gay– well, I might as well just not come home. Oh, right, yes, I didn’t say, but you were right. As usual. I’m gay. At least I think must be gay, because I already fancy that guy we got the car back with more than I ever fancied Liz, and that scares the hell out of me too. I really don’t want to be a gay college drop-out who can’t even play the violin– I can’t be. I’m on a _scholarship–_ So, anyway, I’ve thought about and what you said, and I’ve decided. And I just wanted to say goodbye. I don’t know why– I suppose because you know why I’m doing it and no one else really does. OK... bye.”

“Oh my God,” John muttered as the machine beeped to signal the end of the message, “he’s going to kill himself.”

“Or taking a road trip,” Sam suggested soothingly. He kissed John’s nearest cheekbone and tried to pull him back down.

John goggled at him. “Of course he’s not taking a _road trip.”_

“Look, at most,” Sam said, stopping the machine before it could play the next message he’d left for John, “at the _very_ most, it’s a cry for attention. Students call my office all the time saying they won’t be in class because they’ll be dead. None of the ones that do that have ever killed themselves. Just call the police, if you’re worried,” he said as John began pulling on his trousers, a phone already wedged between his shoulder and his ear. 

“Hi John,” Liz’s voice said in John’s ear. “What’s happening?” 

“Liz. What’s Joe’s cell phone number?” 

Sam gave a very obvious sigh and began wiping his fingers.

“He doesn’t have one,” Liz said. “Why? I can give you his home phone.” 

“No, I don’t think that would help, but call it anyway, he might have had a window open. And then go to his house to check on him there.”

“Is he all right?”

“No, I don’t think so. Get anyone else you can think of to check anywhere else you think he might have gone. I’m going to the bridge. I think he must be using a pay phone from somewhere around there.” 

“OK,” she said, quiet but no nonsense. “Let me know if you find him.”

“Come on then,” Sam said, picking up his shoes. “Let’s go, if we’re going.”

He drove them out to the Golden Gate Bridge in his socks, doing up more shirt buttons at each set of traffic lights. John fielded phone calls from other members of his junior class (who were all reporting back from places Joe wasn’t) and fretted. He knew that what was happening now was at least partially his fault for not listening when he’d been asked to listen. Joe’s phone call confirmed that he, Joe, thought this was true, as well. 

As they sped past familiar buildings, John mentally turned over the timing calculations and probabilities. Joe had called after Sam had left his office, so the message might have been as much as forty minutes old by the time they’d heard it. Then Joe would have had to walk from the pay phone to the bridge proper, walk towards the centre and then consider what he was about to do. It might already be too late, but the bridge, when they reached it, seemed calm.

John got out of the car at the south end of the bridge.

“I’ll meet you at the centre,” Sam called as John shut the passenger door behind himself. 

The BMW drove off down the bridge and John began running through the huddles of slow-moving pedestrians, many of whom looked enough like Joe to make his heart lurch as he approached them. 

He wasn’t dressed for this sort of activity: his shoes skidded on the concrete, and his shirt and jumper were quickly damp with sweat. The same wind he’d heard in Joe’s message whipped around him and dragged him backwards. His lungs, unused to such sustained activity, were screaming by the time he saw Joe leaning against a street lamp about ten metres away. It was definitely him this time, dressed in his customary tan jacket with his large backpack on the floor next to his shoes. John’s heart rate had time to slow before Joe turned and saw him. 

_“No!”_ John yelled as Joe grabbed the nearby streetlamp and hauled himself up onto the railings. Someone nearby screamed and the most of the people around Joe started backing away. John forced himself through against the current. “This isn’t necessary!”

Joe’s jacket billowed out behind him. “Because you have a grand plan to put me on the straight and narrow again?”

“It has nothing to do with me!” John shouted over the wind. “But if you want to know about me– _yes,_ I get overwhelmed! I’m feeling overwhelmed right now–”

“Great,” Joe said. “Enjoy feeling like the rest of us.”

“This isn’t the first time,” John yelled back. “Listen – I wasn’t much older than you when I went to China for the first time. I didn’t speak Mandarin very well– I still don’t. I met up with an army doctor friend of mine, Evelyn, who was working there – he was such a good man. He’d got wind of a major disaster in the next region. Hemorrhagic fever, Joe. Internal bleeding. There’d been an accident in a lab nearby. I volunteered – stupidly – to go along as an extra pair of hands. I had no idea what it would be like. Evelyn was the only qualified doctor there, and he caught the disease about a month after we arrived. I tried to ship him out, but by then the Chinese government had noticed we were there, and refused to let us go. You see they shouldn’t have been experimenting with these diseases. No one was supposed to know. So Evelyn died, while I was still trying to find someone to talk to me. I caught the disease myself about a week after that, Joe. But I finally managed to talk to my brother. He had me airlifted out.” John pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I’m not trying to make what you’re going through seem insignificant. What I’m saying is – you’re not alone. Everyone gets overwhelmed. You just need to find the right people to help you. If you don’t like my suggestions or don’t want my advice, there are other people you can talk to, who could help you. But you have to be alive if you want it to get better.” He stretched out a hand to Joe, edging closer to him. “Please, don’t do this.”

Joe looked nervously at the crowd of people around him and then back out into the Bay. “Even your crises are more glamorous than mine.”

“That’s not what I meant!” John shouted.

“I know. But it doesn’t make any difference, does it? I don’t have your safety net, professor. My brother isn’t a powerful politician. He works in a garage. I’m supposed to be able to support everyone, but I can’t. And I don’t want to disappoint anyone any more. Everyone has these expectations –”

“I’m not disappointed in you,” John told him. “But I know you are with me, so perhaps I,” he pulled himself up onto the barrier, “should be up here, _too_ –” and stood, unsupported, his arms outstretched. The wind pushed at him and John almost lost his balance. From a distance he heard Sam shout his name, while close at hand Joe yelled, _“Professor!”_ and reached out to grab him with the hand not clutching the lamp. In his pocket, a phone began ringing. 

“Thank you,” John said, steadying himself. He looked out over the Bay and thought about how lucky it was that he wasn’t afraid of heights. “You know this isn’t that bad. In fact it’s rather bracing –”

“If you fall there’s only a two percent chance you’ll survive,” Joe said furiously.

“Those aren’t very good odds,” John agreed. He fished the ringing phone out of his pocket with the hand not holding Joe’s and answered it. “Perhaps, on second thoughts, we should both get down. What do you think? Hello. Yes, Liz– he’s on the Golden Gate.”

“What about _you_ get down?” Joe said. 

“OK. I’m almost there,” Liz said and hung up.

“Not without you,” John said. 

“John, get down right now,” Sam said, pushing through the crowd. 

“Thank you, but not without Joe,” John told him. “I thought we’d already covered this.”

Sam turned on Joe. “Get down,” he said firmly, _“now.”_ Joe stared at him as though he were a pair of headlights fast approaching, and turned back to John, who still had a firm hold on his hand. “You need counselling and time off from school,” Sam continued. “Take the rest of the year out to work, make money and come back in fall.”

“I can’t do that–” Joe began.

 _“Why?”_ Sam said. “Because people will _judge_ you? Who the fuck cares? _Really._ I had to re-take sophomore year after my granddad died because I was supposed to learn the business while studying Brecht. Nobody even remembers that now. Counselling and time off will solve most of your problems, and if you even think about saying being gay is a problem I’ll push you off this fucking bridge myself. Now _get down.”_

“...OK,” Joe said. He turned back to John. “Professor Smith –”

“You first, thank you, Joe,” John said, and only released his hand when he could see Joe’s feet on the concrete. He jumped down amid scattered applause. 

Sam had a hand on the young man’s shoulder, presumably to keep him from trying anything else. “Come on,” he said, steering Joe back towards the North side car park. John put a more comforting hand on Joe’s other arm, which was trembling beneath his fingers. 

About twenty metres down the bridge, Liz’s white jeep caught up with them. She clambered out, heedless of the traffic, and hugged Joe as tightly as she could. Sam, released from duty, wandered off to stand by the railings. John opened the passenger-side door and Liz helped Joe climb up. 

“Don’t worry,” she said, walking round to the driver’s side, “I’ll look after him. Do you need a ride somewhere?”

John shook his head and patted the roof of the car, as he had seen people in films do. 

Inside, the car Joe jumped at the noise. John gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile as the jeep pulled away. 

He turned and walked over to lean on the railings next to Sam, their arms pressed lightly against each other. 

Sam dropped his head, so his fringe hung down and his forehead rested inches from John’s. “That,” he said slowly, “was a _really_ dumb thing you just did.”

“I know,” John said. Now it was over he could feel how close he’d been to falling, and if he fell how unlikely it was he would have survived. The barrier currently supporting them seemed sturdy, though, and next to him Sam smelled of sweat and wore running shoes underneath his smart trousers. It was easy to believe one was alive and safe. John turned to look at him. “How angry at me are you, would you say?”

“No more than you deserve,” Sam said. He bumped his head into John’s. “Mostly I’m just really glad you’re all right. Don’t do that to me again, though, OK?” he said seriously. “Don’t leave me.”

“I have no plans to,” John said, smiling at him.

“And that, Doctor Smith, is exactly your problem. You never plan for anything. You just _react.”_

“I _plan_ things,” John said, slightly hurt by this analysis, “I plan lots of things. I also like to think on my feet. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.” 

“Well, it scares the shit out of me for one thing.” 

“Sorry,” John murmured, although, for the moment, he couldn’t think of a plan that would have produced a better result. Joe was safe and would be looked after. He was safe and Sam was here with him.

“No, you’re not,” Sam said and smiled. “But thanks for saying it anyway.”

John sighed. He tapped a short rhythm on the far edge of the barrier. 

“You didn’t tell me you’d dropped out of university,” he said after a while. “I realise this might not seem germane to the discussion at hand, but I think that it might be.”

“It was a long time ago,” Sam said. John raised an eyebrow. “And, yes, all right, a lie I thought up on the way here that made our situations seem more similar than they were,” Sam admitted. “Do you think your kid will check? Should I have my records altered?” 

“I think Joe probably has other things to worry about. I would appreciate it, though, if you did everything you could to help him defer his study. I know you’re friends with the Chancellor. Friendly with him, at any rate.”

“No problem,” Sam said. He pushed himself out of his leaning position and stood. “Ready to go home, then?”

“Yes, I think so,” John said and didn’t bother to ask which house Sam meant as Sam took his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story isn't dead, but it is on possibly infinite sabbatical. If you want to read the bit of chapter 5 I've already written, as well as (spoiler cut, so you can just read the extract if you want) some pretty comprehensive thoughts about what would happen in the next two chapters and the ending , please visit this post: http://aralias.dreamwidth.org/1968381.html#cutid1


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